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General => General Technical Chat => Topic started by: Rick Law on January 21, 2020, 06:34:42 am

Title: A lesson in the danger of relying on computer language? Facebook apologized...
Post by: Rick Law on January 21, 2020, 06:34:42 am

I suppose this is a lesson in the danger of relying on computer language translation.  It could start a war.

Quoted from BusinessInsider.com (with emphasis added):

Facebook on Saturday apologized for mis-translating Chinese President Xi Jinping's name to "Mr. Shithole" in posts on the site translated from Burmese to English.
...
According to Reuters, mistranslation was first discovered in a post on Myanmar's State Counselor Office page, discussing a meeting between leader Aung San Suu Kyi and Xi. When translated from Burmese to English, the post referenced Xi as "Mr. Shithole" numerous times.
...
According to the statement, Facebook did not have Xi's name in its Burmese database, which led to the embarrassing gaffe. Essentially, without a reference, Facebook's system was forced to guess the translation of Xi's name, and similar tests in Burmese on words that begin with "xi" and "shi" produced "shithole."

Full article here:
https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-apologizes-for-xi-jinping-mr-shithole-botched-translation-2020-1?op=1 (https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-apologizes-for-xi-jinping-mr-shithole-botched-translation-2020-1?op=1)

EDIT: Corrected wrong bolding of text and a missing line.

Title: Re: A lesson in the danger of relying on computer language? Facebook apologized...
Post by: Leiothrix on January 22, 2020, 02:05:40 am

The problem is that their translation is still correct  :)