WaPo Editors Don't Know What an Idiom Is

Surely the stupidest thing WaPo has ever published is this bit of old tosh on the Maryland state motto. Some dude who proclaims himself a translator says it is "sexist in any language." The motto in English is "Strong deeds, gentle words," but the author has himself in a snit because the Italian original is "“Fatti maschii, parole femine."

“Fatti maschii, parole femine” (the second word is pronounced with a hard K sound, “mask-ee”) is an old Italian proverb. According to the state of Maryland, the phrase translates to “strong deeds, gentle words.” Yet this is willfully misleading. The direct translation is hardly gentle: “Manly deeds, womanly words.” I’m a professional literary translator of Italian, but don’t just take it from me.
Giuseppe Patota, the director of the Garzanti Italian Dictionary in Milan, says that the phrase “has distinctly sexist connotations, and the translation proposed by the state of Maryland misses its literal meaning.”

The first comment on the piece gets the only possible reaction just right: "Oh fer crissakes."

Misses the literal meaning? Or accurately translates the meaning of an expression? Have we fallen so far that a linguist, a professional translator and whatever editors might exist at WaPo online can't recognize an idiom when they see it?

Next installments from this guy:

• Midwesterners are backwards and don't understand biology: elbows don't really have grease. 
• "To be caught red-handed" is an anti-Native American slur.

The author is said to be working on a book on translation. Oy!