[nbernard]

To a french ear, it sounds like a (bad) translation from English.

For instance, "a été testée au combat" is meaningless in French. The same idea in idiomatic French would be "a subi l'épreuve du feu". And I guess the "billions" should be only "milliards" (French uses the long scale, so the word "billion" exists but corresponds to a thousand billions as understood in (US?) English)...

[makeitdouble]

I hear you, but it's also a reality that more people in our field have heard "battle tested", know what it means and understand the French translation than "épreuve du feu" (I genuinely only ever read that idiom, and not once since the horrible movie which got that as the French name).

That's where I'm saying going back to an older idiom just makes it classic, and doesn't help communication in itself IMHO.