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.]
I agree. After I figure out what translation that I think it should be, I go ahead and update it (but not make it too easy, lol). It only changes it for me in the translation field. Sometimes I will also post a comment because the answers to that comment help me understand French better.
Sometimes the original sentence in Tatoeba is in English. The English sentences seem to be heavy in idiomatic phrases. It seems that informal, idiomatic English is sometimes translated into formal, literary French. That makes no sense at all.
Also, it seems that some translators place a big value on wording the translation differently from the original. So sometimes the French translations are a little odd just to make them different.
However, I am learning so much in terms of vocabulary, etc, I just keep going. The forums are great for sorting it out. Thanks to everyone who answers.