Jazz, Squid, Earthquakes, Trudeau and Thor – The Friday Funnies are here
In 2018 a devastating earthquake hit Indonesia. Citizens used Facebook to communicate their status but were shocked to find that their postings included confetti and celebratory balloons. Facebook's algorithm incorrectly identified the context of the Indonesian word "selamat", which can mean "be safe", "to survive" or "congratulations", and translated it as the latter rather than the former and added the celebratory graphics. A most embarrassing and avoidable mistake by Facebook.
The Netflix Korean hit series, "Squid Games", suffered from multiple contextual and translation errors as episodes were subtitled from Korean to American English. Because of these errors and omissions, many key elements of the original story were absent in the subtitles leaving viewers in the US with only a partial appreciation of the story.
In 2016, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave a speech at the White House. If you viewed his speech on ABC television you watched Trudeau - speaking in Canadian French - discuss "... train stations in Motorola", praise "... Nazi innings", and speaking on behalf of "... us old guys." He actually said none of those things but ABC's automated subtitling translation software consistently made the errors that the viewing audience consumed. https://youtu.be/9LnjdfpiFS8
In 2001, Honda debuted its compact "Fitta". Honda believed the "Fitta" name had a hip, European sound to it. But there was a problem with the name. "Fitta", in Swedish, translates as a vulgar term for women's genitalia, and it sounds very similar to obscenities in both Italy and Spain. Honda previewed the name with linguists in multiple markets and immediately switched the "Fitta" name to "Jazz" in those markets that would have been offended.
And lastly …
Disney is an entertainment monolith with a massive global reach. One of its biggest franchises is the Marvel Studios universe of comic-based movies. The studio released "Avengers: Infinity War" in 2018, and immediately received complaints from its Korean moviegoers protesting the mistake-laden English to Korean translated subtitles in the movie. In fact, the Korean word for "seed" was mistranslated into the Korean word for "f%ck." Just like Mantle, no Mickey is always perfect!