My hunch is it would work somewhat, but poorly.
Languages encode similar human experiences, so their conceptual spaces probably have natural alignments even without translation examples. Words for common objects or emotions might cluster similarly.
But without seeing actual translations, a model would miss nuances, idioms, and how languages carve up meaning differently. It might grasp that "dog" and "perro" relate to similar concepts without knowing they're direct translations.
To agree and extend, that's actually how human language works too. The cultural connotations of "dog" in english might be quite different from "perro".
And it gets even more complex because the connotations of "dog" in the USA in 2025 are unquestionably different from "dog" in England in 1599. I can only assume these distinctions also hold across languages. They're not a direct translation.
Let alone extreme cultural specificities... To follow the same example, how would one define "doge" now?