Nov
5
The particular vegetable, a local delicacy, is known as grelo. In As Pontes, in the north of Spain, grelo grows in abundance, serving as one of the main ingredients for all of the town’s delicious food.
It meant the town’s “Feria do grelo” or rapini festival – held every February with tastings and awards for the best grelos – became “Feria clitoris” in Spanish. However, people in Galicia speak a mixture of languages, with a few using the local Galician language and others the countrywide Castilian Spanish.
However, while the original description in local lingo galego (Galician) was perfectly innocent, by the time Google had its evil linguistic way in providing a Castillian Spanish translation, it had rendered grelo as clítoris.
Google Translate, however, interpreted grelo as a Portuguese slang word for “clitoris” and, well… the results included the line: The clitoris is a typical product in Galician cuisine. “Since 1981 … the festival has made the clitoris one of the star products of its local gastronomy”.
So where did Google Translate go wrong? I remember my high school Spanish class fondly.
Google has confirmed that the translation error has now been fixed, but if you’re still intrigued by the idea of a vagina festival you can head further afield to Japan, where they’re actually a thing.
Montserrat Garcia, the town’s spokeswoman, revealed that they were unaware of the translation error.
Rapini is a staple vegetable in much of Galician cuisine and is used widely in Portuguese and Italian dishes. Since the translations are generated by machines, not all translation will be ideal and sometimes there will be mistakes or mis-translations.
“If people come across incorrect or inappropriate translations, they can let us know about them and we’ll be happy to fix them as soon as possible”, the spokesperson added.
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