Hi CS, and welcome to WR!
Sorry to blow you down in your first post, but I have to say I don't agree.
This forum, and any decent bilingual reference source, is full of statements to the effect that the threshold in Italian for vulgar is higher than it is for English. That's a huge generalization, of course, but one that makes sense and that is often helpful. This means that a word like "cazzata" will slip below the safety net, or the "rude-word-radar". It means that a corresponding term in English will be milder.
A concrete example might help. Schiettino (he of Concordia "fame"), said (testualmente) "Ho fatto una cazzata". It has been revealed in court that he said this on the ship's intercom/communications system, to "alert" personnel that he had done something wrong (made a mistake). In fact, he had run the ship aground. Interestingly (for our discussion), the Italian expression actually minimizes the gravity of his "mistake". A similar understatement in English might be, "(Oops,) I made a boo-boo", and in fact I back this as a strong candidate for a suitable translation of the phrase, in a wide range of situations (indeed, this has been suggested earlier in this thread).