[af78]

I'm not sure how to translate this line: « Ah ben maintenant elle va marcher beaucoup moins bien, forcément ! » (Bourvil reportedly improvised it, causing de Funès to start laughing and bow his head to hide it).

Google Translate: “Ah well now it’s going to work a lot less well, of course!”

Deepl:

- It's going to work much less well.

- It's going to run much less smoothly.

- It's going to run a lot less smoothly.

None of these suggestions sounds good to me (in case it isn't clear I'm not a native English speaker).

[Terretta]

The Google one seems dead on, except it should be gendered, native English refers to boats and cars as female gender:

“Ah well, now she'll work a lot less well, of course!”

Since you mentioned Google and Deepl, here's O1:

“Ah well, obviously she’s gonna run a lot less well now!”

“Ah well, looks like she’ll be running a lot less well, naturally!”

My own thoughts on google were replace work with run, replace it with she, and I wasn't sure about of course, versus, say, naturally. My own would have been:

“Ah well, now she'll work a lot less well, naturally!”

The context is that the 2CV driver is fussing to the Rolls driver who bumped him to make it fall apart. It keeps the Galois humor of a 2CV running well ever, and the naturally rhymes with that.

// English native, FSL here

[colanderman]

All four sound fine to my native ears. "It's going to run ..." is most natural when talking about a vehicle. (French if I recall does not distinguish "working" from "running" for machines generally.)

[af78]

Thanks.

While the primary meaning of 'marcher' is 'to walk', it can be used for machines and vehicles indeed. 'Rouler' is for vehicles only. Interestingly in English the verb 'to run' is used, suggesting higher speed.

The expression “to work better” is quite common but I don't remember seeing “to work less well”. And as I was taught that « plus grand » translates to “taller” but « moins grand » to “not as tall as”, I expected something more involved.

[colanderman]

Yes, I might naturally say "It's no longer going to run as smoothly." But, to me, phrasing it as "It's going to run much less smoothly" adds to the humor by suggesting that it will to _some_ degree still run "smoothly" (when in fact it won't run at all).

[cryptonector]

Marcher here means "work", "function".

[maxerickson]

Something like "Oh well now it will run a lot less well, obviously." Seems like the more or less literal translation.

"a lot less well" is the awkward part, a more natural construction would be a negation "is not going to run well" or something like that.