Why is "saying" used for the translation of 言う?

Question

思い切って「妊娠してるの」と告げると彼は「俺の子だと言うのか？」と言った。

When I braced myself and said, "I'm pregnant" he said "Are you saying it's mine?"

The translation puzzles me. "Saying" would normally be used for 言っている, but it is used for 言う instead. A case could be made that the translation is being liberal, but other example sentences make me suspicious:

どうして謝るのですか

Why are you apologizing?

Perhaps, there are more bad translations than I thought, but even then, there are cases where I cannot think that the present tense of a verb is anything but progressive. For example, there is this trailer (the example sentence is at 4:29)

もう。何を言わせるのよ

So, when 言う is translated as "saying," particularly in dramatic situations such as 「私はダメだと言うの？」 is it a liberal translation and they really mean habitual action or is it literally "saying?"

Answer 1

This is just a result of you trying to map English onto Japanese. It's fine to say these in Japanese, but because of the subtle differences in the ways English and Japanese can handle verb tenses, the translation to English changes it into a progressive "ing" despite it being hammered into our brains in Japanese 101 that "ing" is for "ている."

Rather, what would you suggest as an alternative translation? For どうして謝る would you say "Why do you apologize?" I'd wager that you would agree that "why are you apologizing?" is more natural/better than "why do you apologize?"