Indian Minister Did Not Actually Die: Meta Apologizes After Auto-Translation Blunder
Kyiv • UNN
Meta apologized after its auto-translation mistakenly reported the death of Siddaramaiah, the chief minister of the Indian state of Karnataka. The minister had posted condolences regarding the death of an actress, but the algorithms translated this as his own death.
An Indian state minister published a post on Facebook and Instagram regarding the death of an actress, which the algorithms of the respective social networks auto-translated as: Mr. Siddaramaiah "passed away."
Meta apologized after this incident.
UNN reports with reference to BBC.
Details
Meta apologized after an Indian chief minister's social media post was incorrectly translated on some of its platforms. As noted, the problem initially was that the auto-translation declared the Indian minister "dead."
This week, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah posted a condolence message in Kannada regarding the death of actress B. Sarojadevi. But when the posts were automatically translated into English, they mistakenly said that Mr. Siddaramaiah himself had "passed away."
Reference
Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ, kannaḍa) is a Dravidian language spoken in southern India. Kannada does not belong to Indo-European languages, but Sanskrit has strongly influenced it. Some military concepts in Kannada are borrowed from Hindi and Marathi.
The first records in Kannada date back to the middle of the first millennium. The foundation of the literary Kannada language in the 10th century was laid by the poet Pampa.
The minister was furious
Mr. Siddaramaiah, realizing that the text had been mistakenly translated to indicate his death, criticized Meta's automatic translation function.
Siddaramaiah's media advisor K.V. Prabhakar wrote a letter to Meta, asking to correct the translation and temporarily suspend Kannada auto-translation until its accuracy improves.
He also urged the company to cooperate with Kannada language experts to prevent similar errors.
Meta reacted to the unfortunate incident
A Meta representative told PTI the day before that the platform had "fixed the issue." He acknowledged the inaccurate translation from the "Kannada" language.
We apologize for this happening
Addition
Meta did not comment on whether it would suspend Kannada translations until translation accuracy is improved, the BBC writes.
Recall
The European Union planned to fine Apple and Meta for violating the Digital Markets Act.