English Translation
The yakuza were tormenting Hiroshi.
Wrong translation sourced again from Tanaka Corpus.
“To torment” in English means “to annoy/harass/torture mentally or physically”. An evil person acts in such a terrible way.
But 試練 in Japanese is given to an aspiring apprentice for a positive purpose. 試練 is a hardship in order to prove that the apprentice is enough religious, is enough capable of fulfilling a mission, or enough determined. So, 試練 is often used in the context of “touchstone” or “ordeal” in the course of self-development. 試す = “try out” and 練習する = “to practice/drill”. Hope you all get the connotation of 試練.
My alternative translation for “The yakuza were tormenting Hiroshi” is:
ヤクザがひろしを痛めつけていた。（いためつけていた）
Hiroshi is a male first name. It can be spelled in hundreds of ways: 博、浩、宏、広志 etc. But we don’t spell it in Hiragana.
The English sentence is in a past progressive tense. But 課している in the original Japanese sentence is in a present progressive tense.