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Comment by d--b | Hacker News Reader

Beware the translation in some places. Google translates: "Une policière engueule une femme dont le garçon de trois ans court dans tous les sens" into "A police officer beats a woman whose three-year-old runs in all directions". The actual translation is: "A female police officer shouts at a woman whose 3-year-old is running all over the place"

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> The actual translation is: "A female police officer shouts at a woman whose 3-year-old is running all over the place"

"Berates" feels much closer than "shouts at", "engueuler" is not just general shouting there's a strong component of scolding to it.

Also "policewoman" if you want to carry gender across the translation, but I'd say "police officer" is just fine, french requires gendering, english does not.

I am not that good in English so for me shouts at was good enough ;)

Gender is important when we talk about "beating" people though.

I was reading it in English when I read that line and thought that didn't seem right. I mean, that would have been the title of the article.

I think "berate" is unnecessary: in the context the type of shouting is completely clear, and "engueuler" is used much more commonly than "berate" so IMO using it would be to change the tone without improving the meaning.

Wow you are right. Given your example, Google Translate doesn't recognize the gender of the police officer at all. It didn't even get "sens" correct, it translated it to "means" instead of "direction" until I told it the correct translation.

> Given your example, Google Translate doesn't recognize the gender of the police officer at all.

Or it did and did not care, "police officer" is a perfectly valid translation for "policière", French is a highly gendered language, English significantly less so.

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