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Hey, it's not that easy to chose between "водяной баран" and "гидравлический таран", you know.

My favourite example of troubled blind translation is still "naked conductor runs under the carriage".

Nice double entendre but it seems to be a perfectly valid description of electrical wiring in a machine? What was the original intent?

It is a perfectly valid description of electrical wiring... but you need to have that context to translate it properly. Technical English translation skills vs. literary English translation skills, if you will.

What was "naked conductor runs under the carriage" supposed to be originally? Open driveshaft? Differential?

It's supposed to mean "a naked wire is stretched under the car". But it very well can be interpreted as, well, as a cloth-less train conductor having to quickly move under the carriage.

It’ll be a reference to a wire surely? Bare conductor?

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