14 DAY TRIAL // China’s President Xi Jinping visited Myanmar after nearly two decades, a historic moment that obviously made the headlines on all media channels.
Including Facebook, that is, where Myanmar officials shared updates on Xi Jinping’s visit in capital city Naypyidaw.
The social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg, however, made an error that took many by surprise.
When translating posts from Burmese to English, Facebook referred to Xi Jinping as “Mr. Sh*thole” for a reason that is still unknown, despite the problem already fixed at the time of writing.
As per ChannelNewsAsia, the translation error also made it to the official Facebook page of Myanmar's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is one of the most popular local figures with a significant number of followers.
The translated version of an announcement shows just how ridiculous Facebook’s mistake was:
“Mr Sh*thole, President of China arrives at 4PM. President of China, Mr. Sh*thole, signed a guest record of the house of representatives.”
Facebook says the translation engine “took a guess”
According to the cited source, Facebook’s translation engine was the only one making this mistake, as Google Translate was working correctly on Saturday when the error occurred.
Facebook, on the other hand, claims the name of the president isn’t included in the Burmese database, so its translation engine just tried to guess a correct translation. And given the similarities between “xi” and “shi,” the translation system ended up with an unfortunate version.
"We fixed a technical issue that caused incorrect translations from Burmese to English on Facebook. This should not have happened and we are taking steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again. We sincerely apologize for the offense this has caused," Facebook explained in an official statement.
At the time of publishing, everything is working correctly when trying to translate China President’s name in a Facebook post.