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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: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday November 04 2015, @11:59PM
Google translate runs into some major grammar issues with German.
I've been learning Deutsch for the past 3 years while living there, and I can see why google translate doesn't handle it well.
I spent quite a while learning (and then speaking whilst I was in Osterreich and Deutschland) Deutsch. It seemed to me that idiomatic phrases were the most difficult. I found it very handy to keep an English-speaking German around so I could always ask: "Wie sagt man das, auf Englisch?" I highly recommend the practice. :)
When I first came across the following, it made me laugh. It still makes me chuckle merrily to myself. I hope it does the same for you
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr