Traduire la lutte

A couple of times I've had to translate incident reports that contain, literally, blow-by-blow accounts of altercations.

As with many things, English tends to require more specific verbs. We need to say punch or hit or slap or kick or poke where French, for example, would simply say donner un coup.

So as a result, I found myself thinking about how exactly you would deliver a blow to someone on a particular body part. It seems to be quite specific to the target body part. If it's the stomach, you're going to punch. If it's the balls, you're probably going to knee or kick depending on the choreography. You wouldn't slap someone on the stomach or poke them in the balls - that would be silly.

We think the reasons for this are anatomical. But what if they're really cultural and we don't realize it? It's not going to apply within my wimpy little collection of European languages obviously, but what if in some obscure and uncolonized pocket of the world there's a culture where it's normal to slap your opponent in the stomach or poke them in the balls? Or what if hitting them in the stomach is a really weird and last-resort sort of thing to do, and a much more normal thing to do during an altercation would be, I don't know, to stick a stick in their ear or something?

What we consider to be normal is always more cultural than we think it is. It would be so cool if this applied to fighting as well.