The company has released a statement saying that this was caused by a bug, which gave an incorrect translation of expletives
We know that automatic translation services are not the most accurate or reliable. Sometimes, the resulting translation is pure gibberish that’s good for a few laughs at the service’s expense. However, Facebook must be hoping that their own translation service had given out gibberish, rather than the faux pas that happened. As per reports, Facebook was translating the Hindi expletive “madarc**d,” to “Muslim”. When writing “maro madarc**d” using the devanagari script, Facebook translates it to “Die Muslim.” Obviously, this drew a lot of flak on social media.
Today in WTF.
Facebook Is Translating A Hindi Expletive To “Muslim” And Needs To Get Its Shit Together https://t.co/9qMK6vcbt4 pic.twitter.com/ufp3koLYXy
— Imaan Sheikh (@sheikhimaan) October 21, 2016
The company has since released a statement saying that this was caused by a bug which gave incorrect translations of expletives. The word now translates to “idiot.” While this isn’t an completely accurate translation, it’s certainly better than before.
This isn’t the first time technology has acted in a manner that it was not designed for. A couple of months ago, Microsoft launched a Twitter bot called Tay that was designed to talk like a millennial. However, bot soon started spewing out racist and hate filled tweets, including one in which it showed appreciation for Adolf Hitler. The bot was quickly taken offline.
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Shrey Pacheco
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