My favorite example of English's willingness to do noun-noun compounding and Spanish's corresponding unwillingness is on the Boston subway:
Passenger emergency intercom unit at end of car
Sistema de intercomunicación para pasajeros en caso de emergencia situado al extremo del tren
There are several things going on there that make the Spanish longer than the English, but one is the obligatory use of explicit prepositions relating the nouns to one another in Spanish. In English terms, the Spanish says
System of intercommunication for passengers in case of emergency situated at the end of the train
See also this list written up by John Cowan of some languages that do noun-noun compounding and what the implicit meanings of such compounds can be:
Passenger emergency intercom unit at end of car
Sistema de intercomunicación para pasajeros en caso de emergencia situado al extremo del tren
There are several things going on there that make the Spanish longer than the English, but one is the obligatory use of explicit prepositions relating the nouns to one another in Spanish. In English terms, the Spanish says
System of intercommunication for passengers in case of emergency situated at the end of the train
See also this list written up by John Cowan of some languages that do noun-noun compounding and what the implicit meanings of such compounds can be:
http://recycledknowledge.blogspot.com/2009/12/noun-noun-comp...
Notice that not all types of compounds are understood in every language, even for languages that sometimes allow this!