Ils ont été obligés de battre en retraite.

I can see the value of dealing with idioms in the original French phrase… to see the way that people actually speak the language. But some of the English translations are in my view unnecessarily idiomatic. Take this example, where the English backtranslation is: “They’ve been forced to turn tail.” As a north American, i might understand what this means… but i think i might translate this as “They’ve been forced to retreat.” And, if i saw only your English backtranslation in the non-listening mode, it is so idiomatic that there is no way i would find the simpler French phrase. [A comment like this isn’t posted as an ‘error’ of translation…as it’s a matter of judgement rather than being an error…plus in Clozemaster, if you post something as an error, the sentence leaves my rotation and i get no points for my time.]

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