Why "la tentation a été trop forte"

Question

Why "la tentation a été trop forte" and not "la tentation était trop forte" or "la tentation avait été trop forte". Or do the translators usually use "was" for "has been". Is this an English phenomenon, as "was" is the "past of the past" ?

Answer

The French can translate into English as “the temptation was too strong”, - he is giving the reason for restarting smoking at that specific point in time in response to a specific trigger, hence he used passé composé.

However, this is a transcription and the French is correct. It doesn’t mean other tenses couldn’t be used but they would change the meaning somewhat. Direct translations don’t always work.