Oh, yes! Chanur is my first love - I read it years before I discovered Foreigner - but I really do love them both, and reread often from both (though Chanur more frequently, since it's shorter and easier to do a total reread).

The Chanur books are full of excellent translation difficulties, from Tully's first appearance on The Pride (to prove his sapience, he writes a sequence of numbers on the deck - in his own blood) all the way through to Hilfy's figuring out how to ask a stsho a fraught question about personality shift after being shut down. (When everything else failed, the maxim ran ... ask the alien how to ask the question. “Then,” she said carefully, and paused while Dlima poured; and paused further while Dlima served Tlisi-tlas-tin. “Then how shall I ask what information you might have gained in this port?”)

Also: haahaaha, yes, the moment Bren is all, "I kinda miss throwing myself down mountains skiing, but I guess my job is a good enough substitute" a lot of things become clear, don't they? :P