As a learning exercise, I wrote out my own German translation to a (12 line) American song (and have benefited by all the corrections to my version).
I was under the impression that this site did not like long passages, so I initially asked the question only about the idiom (Aladdin's Lamp) and the two surrounding lines that most troubled me (and did not link it). That had the opposite problem, because people lost a lot of time figuring out the context.
My (mis) understandings are as follows:
All other things being equal:
1) Shorter passages are preferred over longer ones.
2) English to German is preferred over German to English (except for fine language nuances in German).
3) "Is my (self-worked) translation correct/appropriate?" is preferred to "Please translate this for me" (without any effort on my part).
So was a twelve-line, self-worked translation question from English to German (with relevant links) appropriate for this site? Where is the limit?