Facebook Wrongly Translates Chinese Leader's Name to ‘Mr. Sh**hole’

Source: NurPhoto / Getty

Facebook Apologizes for Translating Chinese Leader’s Name Incorrectly

Facebook has issued an apology after the site incorrectly translated the name of the Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

According to reports from The Guardian, the company became aware of the offensive mistranslation when Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto civilian leader of Myanmar, took to Facebook to write about Mr. Xi’s visit to her country.

The posts were written in Burmese, but when they were translated to English, Mr. Xi’s name became “Mr. Sh**hole.” Google’s translation function reportedly didn’t make the same mistake.

Facebook spokesman Andy Stone apologized for the error on Saturday. “We fixed a technical issue that caused incorrect translations from Burmese to English on Facebook. This should not have happened and we are taking steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Since Facebook’s system didn’t have Xi Jinping’s name in its Burmese database, it took a guess at the translation. Tests of similar words that begin with “xi” and “shi” also were translated as “sh**hole.”

This isn’t the first problem Facebook has had with translations from Burmese, momentarily removing the feature in 2018 when Reuters reported that the tool was generating strange results.