Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Wednesday November 04 2015, @05:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the festival dept.

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?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday November 04 2015, @09:11PM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Wednesday November 04 2015, @09:11PM (#258518) Homepage

    Will the AI take into account political correctness, even if the language is spoken correctly?

    Recall the infamous "Ooga-Booga" debacle of Google Translate. Here's some background -- the phrase "Ooga booga" is associated with Africans in a pejorative manner based on stereotypes of what their spoken language is supposed to sound like, similar to how the phrase "ching chong" is associated with Orientals.

    Well, some fella typed "ooga booga" [imgur.com] into Google Translate and discovered that it was detected as Somali and had an English translation. "Ooga Booga" no longer translates (though it is still detected as Somalian), because das' raciss' 'n' sheeit, but you might have luck with "yaba daba doo" [imgur.com] or "Oo oo oo oog oo oo ook oo oor oo ool ooda oos oo oo oo oo oo oog ooda" ("And which establish the quality and effectiveness of the ook He and the choice of which to establish plug").

    Note: " Oo oo oo oog oo oo ook oo oor oo ool ooda oos oo oo oo oo oo oog ooda " works, but the URL to the translate doesn't link properly(it removes the spaces) so copy and paste it into google translate and see yourself.