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How 8 Pixels Cost Microsoft Millions

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the debug-twice-distribute-once dept.

NubKnacker writes "Economic Times, one of India's biggest business daily's is carrying a story about how a small colouring mistake forced Microsoft to recall 200,000 copies of Windows 95. This wouldn't be the first time that has happened to Microsoft. From the article, "Microsoft has also managed to upset women and entire countries. A Spanish-language version of Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch," because of an unfortunate error in translation." Ouch!"

8 of 734 comments (clear)

  1. whatever... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    please keep in mind the 'bitch' problem is from people in central america using the SPANISH (IE, DESTINED FOR SPAIN) version of the OS...

    its not microsofts fault that people in central america, use an OS destined for ANOTHER COUNTRY, and their words overlap into profanity.

    anything to bash MS, eh slashdot?

  2. Re:Anyone speak Latin? by LGagnon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I can't speak Spanish, but I have been told by a person from Brazil that one of the words for "girl" in European Portuguese becomes "bitch" in Brazilian Portuguese. It is most likely that this is the same situation: a matter of the word's usage changing in other regions that speak that language.

  3. Re:Not the first time... by lothar97 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Clearly not everyone believes Snopes, because I found both the "pinto/penis" and the "nova/no go" stories mentioned here, here, and here. All cite the same usual suspects, so who can tell which are true, and which are false. However, the BBC does mention the "pinto" story here. We all know the BBC never makes anything up...

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  4. Re:Anyone speak Latin? by YankeeInExile · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My friend Zaulo was here this weekend helping me re-arrange my office, and we were discussing this exact story (thankfully this is a dupe, so I've had a chance to get some Local Color betweent the first and second postings!)

    File this under "the Spanish-speaking world is big. Really Big.". In Locale esMX macho and hembra are commonly used for animals, meaning male and female respectively.

    When applied to humans, they take on the connotation of "super manly" (a usage that is common in US English) and "extremely feminine and beautiful" ... (a usage that seems not to have found its way to the US).

    In some Latin American coutnries, the usage ranges from decidedly negative to merely curious.

    There was a similar story that made the headlines for a while, that some beer company had a series of commercials where all of the characters were referring to each other as "güey" (pronounced "way", like "do you know the way to san jose?") , which in esMX is the closest translation possible to "dude." In some other locales it is much more rude.

    The word is, in fact, a variant on the word buey (Ox) which is a very crude insult, likely leading to physical assault.

    --
    How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
  5. Beware of the source by Gzip+Christ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Beware of the source. I came across another article from their site earlier this morning and I'm perplexed as to how they can be considered a credible news source. Check out their article on programmers outsourcing their own jobs if you need a good laugh. They took a comment that was posted on Slashdot awhile back from some guy who was joking about how he had outsourced his own job to India and not only did they treat this guy's post as a reliable news source, but they also extrapolated it into claims of this practice being the hot new trend. It's quite bizarre. I wish I could find the original comment because I remember reading it and laughing at the time, but Google isn't turning it up for some reason.

  6. Re:Dupe... by LocoMan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    IIRC the translation they used was "hembra", that is a good translation of female (as far as a dictionary goes), but it's normally only used when referring to female animals. I think it was in Republica Dominicana (might be wrong) that "hembra" was slang for "bitch" (here in Venezuela it wouldn't have been as bad)

  7. Re:Not the first time... by JAD+lifter · · Score: 4, Interesting


    Here is one example:
    http://shock-awe.info/archive/000858.php/
    Granted it is not the most coherant example, but I do not have the time right now to go digging through google looking for examples of snopes being wrong.

    I am not sure how scopes could be right or wrong

    If they say that something is False when in reality that thing is True then snopes is wrong.

  8. Spanish dialects are extremely variable by Java+Ape · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I hate to spoil the fun taking pot-shots at Microsoft, but the Spanish language error is hardly their fault. I speak fluent Spanish, and lived in South America for several years. Each time I moved to a different region (even within the same country!) the language would undergo substancial change. Most importantly, the words most likely to change were those with sexual connotation or profane impliction.

    For example, cojer means "to pick up", but in mexico it means "to have sexual relations with". You can swing by to cojer your friends in most countries, but your Mexican buddies will probably object. (Acutally, I don't don't know if this is true for Northern Mexico, not having been there). There are literally thousands of similar examples -- be very careful asking shop keepers if they have eggs!

    Since the language is extremely variable over even short geographic distances, it would be VERY difficult to provide Spanish-Language versions of your software that didn't offend someone.

    For the record, I believe the word in question here is "hembra" - which means "female" most places, but can be derogatory in others.