Nov
4
You’ve tripped up another innocent user yet again.
A town has been left embarrassed after their annual event was misrepresented as a “clitoris festival” – thanks to a Google Translate error.
Unfortunately, to their horror, they had been inviting people to take part in a “clitoris festival”.
But Google Translate confused the Galician word for rapini – “grelo” – with Portuguese slang meaning clitoris.
But, a translation error turned “Feira do grelo” (Rapini Festival) into ‘Feria ClÃtoris’ (Clitoris Festival).
“The clitoris is one of the typical products of Galician cuisine”, delighted punters were informed.
But as it turns out, the word means something very different in Portuguese, something the staff at town hall later found out when they tried translating the text into Castillian Spanish for their official website.
In what’s probably the best Google translate mix-up in history, a small town in Galicia, northwestern Spain, ended up doing just that. Grelo is the green vegetable for which the region is famous, and an important part of the festival.
A spokesperson for Google has confirmed that the incorrect translation has since been fixed.
In an interview with The Guardian, Garcia, upon realizing the error, said, “It was quite a surprise”. The town is considering complaining to Google on the grounds that it should recognize the Galician language.
Meanwhile, Google Translate was reported to have corrected the translation. The Guardian noted that the Galician word, “grelo” is now translated as “brote” or sprout. Since the translations are generated by machines, not all translation will be ideal and sometimes there will be mistakes or mis-translations. When a word is translated, it usually looks for patterns across millions of documents to provide the best translation.
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