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Jessica Jones over at The Local continues reporting on an embarrassing gaffe in promoting a vegetable celebration in a town in northwestern Spain. The town, Pontes, publicized its annual rapini festival on the town hall's website.
From the article:
A town hall in northwestern Spain was left red-faced after a Google Translate error led to it advertising its local leaf vegetable celebration as a much more X-rated affair.
One of the highlights of the year in the town of As Pontes in Galicia, northwestern Spain, is its annual rapini festival, when townsfolk celebrate the town's speciality, the leafy green vegetable similar to spinach.
[...] But when residents clicked onto the Castillian Spanish version of the town's website - provided by Google Translate - to check the dates for next year's fest they were shocked at the new turn the festival had apparently taken.
"The clitoris is one of the typical products of Galician cuisine," read the description of the festival on the Castillian Spanish version of the town hall's website, whose original version is written in Galician.
"Google translate recognized our Galician word grelo as Portuguese and translated into the Spanish clítoris," town hall spokeswoman Monserrat García, explained to The Local.
Google Translate changed Feira do grelo (Rapini Festival) into Feria Clítoris (Clitoris Festival) leading to some embarrassment when staff at the town hall discovered their error on Thursday.
While this is embarrassing for the folks in Pontes, it raises some interesting questions as to how useful automated translation software (such as Google Translate) can be.
Have any Soylentils run into issues like this while using automated translation software? Did anyone see the mistranslation and make travel plans based on the it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @08:08PM
I was being neither. You pondered about how useful such software can be and I found that to be a very odd question. It is pretty damn clear, to me at least, that it is really really useful. You could give me a book in a language that I have zero proficiency in, and I could tell you exactly what that book was about with almost no effort at all. That's pretty damn useful.
Perhaps you should have deleted the entire first sentence in your comment at the bottom because it completely contradicts your explanation, which is fully captured in your second sentence. Your first sentence is akin to "It does leave one to wonder how useful automobiles are to moving people from place to place."
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday November 04 2015, @08:48PM
If you're attempting to be deliberately obtuse, you're doing a lovely job. Keep up the good work!
If you're attempting to troll, not so much. In that case, keep trying -- you can do much better than that!
I was being neither. You pondered about how useful such software can be and I found that to be a very odd question. It is pretty damn clear, to me at least, that it is really really useful. You could give me a book in a language that I have zero proficiency in, and I could tell you exactly what that book was about with almost no effort at all. That's pretty damn useful.
I'm sorry you weren't able to follow along, friend. Whether you found the question odd or not is your issue, not mine.
Perhaps you should have deleted the entire first sentence in your comment at the bottom because it completely contradicts your explanation, which is fully captured in your second sentence. Your first sentence is akin to "It does leave one to wonder how useful automobiles are to moving people from place to place."
Thank you for your advice. I'll take it under advisement. It's always nice to have a friendly voice in my ear letting me know what I'm supposed to be thinking and saying. You rock!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr