How does "Comment allez-vous" become "How are you" if allez

How does “Comment allez-vous” become “How are you” if allez is go?

Two points:

  1. This is how languages work, very rarely do they translate word-for-word.
  2. There are some languages where the “go” sense is preserved. I don’t know whether you speak, say, German well enough to know “Wie geht’s?”. Here the “go” aspect of the French is maintained and means “How are you?”. Even in English there’s the very familiar “How’s it going?” meaning “How are things with you?”
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Not to mention Italian, Swedish, amongst languages were “how is it going” means how are you.

Actually a direct translation of the German ‘wie geht’s?’ is also possible in English. One can say ‘how goes it?’, though I don’t think this is used so much these days.

In Portuguese we also say " Como vais?/Como é que vais?"
“vais” is a form of the irregular verb “ir” - go
Eu vou - I go
tu vais - you go
(simple present)