Latest news with #mistranslation
Khaleej Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- Khaleej Times
Meta apologises for translation glitch that pronounced Indian minister 'dead': Times of India
Social media giant Meta has apologised for a mistranslation of a post by an Indian chief minister on Facebook and Instagram, falsely suggesting he had died, Times of India reported. Chief Minister of India's Karnataka Siddaramaiah posted a message on Tuesday in Kannada language to mourn B. Saroja Devi, a veteran Indian actress who passed away on Monday after a career that saw her act in about 200 films over seven decades. However, when these posts were auto-translated into English, they mistakenly said that Siddaramaiah, not the actress, had "passed away". The Indian politician complained and said that his media advisor wrote to Meta who acknowledged the glitch, apologised, and claimed to have fixed the issue. "We fixed an issue that briefly caused this inaccurate Kannada translation. we apologise that this happened," a Meta spokesperson was cited by PTI as saying. "I request everyone not to spread confusion or misinformation based on an error that did not originate from us. It is time Meta puts in place better and more responsible translation systems," Siddaramaiah said on X. An old version of the auto-translation showed the post as saying: "Chief Minister Siddaramaiah passed away yesterday, multilingual star, senior actress B." Khaleej Times used the auto translation tool to translate the post on Saturday and it showed a correct translation. It now reads: "Multilingual star, senior actress B passed away yesterday in Bangalore". Take a look: Kannada is a Dravidian language spoken primarily in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and the official language of Karnataka.
BBC News
6 days ago
- Politics
- BBC News
Karnataka: Meta apologises after chief minister Siddaramaiah declared 'dead' by auto-translate
Meta has apologised after an Indian chief minister's social media post was mistranslated on some of its platforms, falsely suggesting he had died, according to Press Trust of India (PTI) news Tuesday, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah posted a condolence message in Kannada language on Facebook and Instagram mourning the death of an when the posts were auto-translated into English, they mistakenly said that Mr Siddaramaiah had "passed away".On Thursday, a Meta spokesperson told PTI that the platform had "fixed an issue that briefly caused this inaccurate Kannada translation". "We apologize that this happened," the spokesperson original post showing him paying tribute to veteran actress B Saroja Devi was wrongly translated to say he had the error, Mr Siddaramaiah criticised Meta's auto-translate feature for Kannada, accusing it of "distorting facts' and 'misleading users". He warned that such mistranslations were especially dangerous in the context of official Thursday, Siddaramaiah's media advisor KV Prabhakar wrote to Meta, asking it to fix the translation and temporarily suspend Kannada auto-translation until its accuracy improves. He also urged the company to work with Kannada language experts to prevent such the BBC checked Mr Siddaramaiah's post on Friday, its English translation read:"The multilingual star, senior actress B Sarojadevi who passed away yesterday, paid his last respects."Meta has not commented on whether it would suspend Kannada translations until its accuracy was improved.
