The meaning of s'amuser

Question

My Barron's French Verbs defines s'amuser as: to have a good time, to amuse oneself, to enjoy oneself. Although I know "Amélie s'amuser au cirque" implies she is having fun, you gave as a possible answer also "is amusing herself". Since you guys a normally very exact in what you allow as correct in your tests, why do you now not accept a technically more correct answer?

Accepted Answer

Hi Joseph, 
I have checked the sentence and it is -
Anne s'amuse au cirque
and the only translation accepted is -
Anne is having fun at the circus
Anne is amusing herself at the circus
is given as one of the multiple-choice answers but it should be marked wrong. If it is not please contact us via your Report It button on your correction board.

Answer

The lesson looks pretty clear to me.. having fun or synonyms thereof. I am not seeing any problem here.

One thing that you need to be aware of is that kwiziq is global so needs to stick to a pretty straightforward international English.

Answer

Agreeing with Joseph here. In other situations, there's a divergence between the "spirit" and the "letter" of the French-to-English translation of reflexive verbs, and so the possible incorrect answers, while literally translated, would sound weird or off. For example, it would be weird in English to say, "She's at the hotel boring herself." So you could give the student two choices: "She's at the hotel boring herself" or "She's bored at the hotel." The first is awkward and would be wrong even though it works as a literal translation. But in this case, it sounds perfectly fine to say "She's amusing herself at the circus."

"She's having fun at the circus" is a bit less formal and probably a bit more likely, but it would probably be better to remove "She's amusing herself at the circus" from the possible incorrect answers here.