Nov
5
Grelo, if you haven’t heard, is a leafy green vegetable that resembles spinach. 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.
Since Galician grelo is grelo (or los grelos) in Spanish, we’re none the wiser as to where the tiller comes in. That wouldn’t be unfortunate, really, but it is because Galician isn’t Castilian Spanish.
What should have read “Feira do grelo” (Rapini Festival) actually went up as “Feria Clitoris (Clitoris Festival), which probably left many Castillian-speaking visitors in a heightened state of either confusion, or excitement”.
‘Since 1981, the festival has made the clitoris one of the star products of the local gastronomy’.
Rapini via Wikimedia Commons by Roedelius CC by-SA 3.0
Monserrat García, spokeswoman for As Pontes town hall, told The Local: “Google translate recognized our Galician word grelo as Portuguese and translated into the Spanish clítoris“.
In what’s probably the best Google translate mix-up in history, a small town in Galicia, northwestern Spain, ended up doing just that. I remember my high school Spanish class fondly.
García said the translation error was likely on the town’s official website for months before it was noticed late last week.
The townsfolk, while pleased with the interest that the mistranslation has generated, have vowed never to use Google Translate again.
Although the error has since been corrected, the town hall is not letting the matter rest. This meant that the word could refer to the vegetable or the slang for “clitoris“.
Rapini is a staple vegetable in much of Galician cuisine and is used widely in Portuguese and Italian dishes. When Google Translate generates a translation, it looks for patterns in hundreds of millions of documents to help decide on the best translation for you. “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”.
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