Slashdot Mirror
How 8 Pixels Cost Microsoft Millions
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!"
This isn't the first time a huge company has made an embarassing translation error. There is that old classic when Ford introduced the Pinto in Brazil. After watching sales go nowhere, the company learned that "Pinto" is Brazilian slang for "small penis." Ford pried the nameplates off all of the cars and substituted them with "Corcel" which means horse.
This is a dupe. Too bad the editors don't bother checking the dupe email box.
Come one, come all, for the greatest dupe on earth... It's not the exact same article, but it's the exact same source materiel...
If I was low on Karma, I'm sure I could Karma Whore and just copy high scoring posts from the previous article...
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5316664.html
Looks like everyone else is a week behind the times...
-- Dave
up 12 days, 22:30, 2 users, load averages: 993.20, 994.21, 994.56
*makes note to limit user processes...
Old News for Nerds. Stuff that use to matter...
"Some of our employees, however bright they may be, have only a hazy idea about the rest of the world," he said." ... and this is different from the rest of America how exactly?
- Bachelorhood is the father of necessity.
The first 10 or so comments aren't quite clear to me.
"...destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch," because of an unfortunate error in translation."
I only speak english... could someone explain the problem with that translation?
After duplicating a post 8 times, Slashdot found that the majority of readers flamed the story before setting fire to their servers in protest.
And now for a naked dwarf chasing a chihuahua...
how a small colouring mistake forced Microsoft to recall 200,000 copies of Windows 95.
I seem to recall getting a lot of blue from Win95, and yet nobody at Microsoft returned by calls when I told them I wanted a refund for their faulty OS...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
A Spanish-language version of Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch"
:)
Pretty bad when even the Slashdot crew knows thats not too smooth...
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?
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.
This would only seem to be detrimental to MS, therfore beneficial to competing products (Linux, Mac, etc.).
Same source, same headline, different day.
It's Groundhog Day!
Daddypants is the e-mail address subscribers are supposed to send e-mail to if we notice a duplicate (or otherwise problematic) article is about to be posted. If the editors aren't going to bother to read Slashdot to see what has already been posted recently, why won't they at least check this e-mail account to see if anyone actually reports problems?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
8 pixels is nothing to be mad about. Microsoft has flooded Poland in win2k/xp. Just check the map in time zone setting. They didn't get banned here though. Seems they predicted how global warming affects Europe in the future.
This is not only a duplicate, it's a poorly written rip-off of the other article. While the other article (in the Register, I believe), was obviously anti-Microsoft, this tabloidish piece doesn't even fully explain the stories.
between flashy products and grim utalitarian products.
OS/2 2.0 caught a lot of crap from people because the icons and graphics were basic, simple with muted colors. What people didn't know was that those icons had been vetted through legal review, special-needs review (i.e. all the various forms of color blindness), internationalization (like pointing with the index finger is OK here, but bad in europe, etc).
By the time you get through all those reviews, most of "chimp attract" is gone.... so where along the continuium do you want your product to be?
--Rob
Qué género es usted? El Man, La Woman, o Los Unspecifieds?
How could they possibly make such a simlpe mislake?
I managed to save a screenshot (well, actually HTML) of the pulled story, because everything (including my comment) disappeared. Check out my Journal entry about it. If you try replying to my comment in the Journal entry, you get a message like:
Submitted Comment
There was an unknown error in the submission
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
"...farmers who were coming into urban areas for the first time and seeing a public restroom."
You don't call taking a crap in the middle of 110 acres of knee-high DeKalb XL a public restroom?
You got some growing up to do sonny boy.
Its India, for having weird anti-free-speech laws that ban inadvertent mistakes or differing opinions. What kind of crap is that? In the US and probably most other free western countries I could publish software that says India is part of China and that the US owns Kashmir. Just nobody would use it. on the other hand, in the US, most folks wouldn't know the difference. and yes its a dupe.
So yeah... dupe!
I especially love the subtitle of this story: "from the debug-twice-distribute-once dept."
Perhaps it should have been from Slashdot's "post-twice-spellcheck-zero-times dept."
--------------------
this space left intentionally blank
Writing Software for a Worldwide Distribution Proves Difficult
Or see article
Here you go.
Here.
At $5 a CD (a whopping $1 for printing and $4 for recall & distribution ,,the $4 is on the high side because distro costs in india are actually dirt cheap)
.. tax write off.
How could this have cost millions??
Oh I get it
I don't see how you can guarantee this kind of thing won't happen in a global company without spending even more millions and restricting creative freedom. Stuff like changing the contents of encyclopedias to accomodate local political doctrine is a nightmare (wikipedia ain't gonna erase disputed Kashmir borders, eliminate reference to Falun Gong or erase Israel from the maps for example), and typos happen in translation, it's just that most of them don't get as serious as woman = bitch, internationalization is already expensive to the point where often English is the default and translation is not done. Most computer games offend someone somewhere, heck in the USA some folks want to ban games for their content never mind Saudi Arabia, are you going to just not distribute or change the content to the lowest common denominator? We'd all be back to playing pong.
mitsubishi pajero (pajero == wanker in spanish, and renault megane (megane == eye glasses in japanese).
Funny story, but generally believed to be an urban legend.
Of note, 'no va' means doesn't move, nova is not the same as no va.
As one site pointed out, would think it strange to buy a dining set with the name 'notable' because it means 'no table'?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
in other news:
How could they possibly make such a simlpe mislake?
Ford Pinto was introduced in the USA in 1970, while Ford Corcel was introduced in Brazil in 1968. The Corcel was actually a Renault design, made under license by Willys in Brazil. Ford in Brazil merged with Willys in 1968. They made a "Ford Jeep" for several years in Brazil.
"Come alive with the pepsi generation" in chinese became "pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave"
"Got Milk?" in spanish became "Are you lactating?"
Pentium 4 chip became the korean "Chip of Death"
Purdue's "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken" in spanish became "It takes a hard man to make a chicken aroused"
Why have a male/female option? When they're running Windows everyone is Microsoft's bitch.
Sounds like more of a problem with India than with microsoft.
Kind of like blaming MS when palestine gets pissed of because they have a map of Isreal or China getting pissed off because they have the Tawianian flag in their software.
If this was not enough, Microsoft used chanting of the Koran used as a soundtrack for a computer game, which led to great offence to the Saudi Arabia government. The company later issued a new version of the game without the chanting, while keeping the previous editions in circulation because US staff thought the slip wouldn't be spotted, but the Saudi government banned the game and demanded an apology. The game was then withdrawn. The software giant managed to further offend the Saudis by creating another game in which Muslim warriors turned churches into mosques. That game was also withdrawn. Does anyone know the title of the two games the article mentions?
No, it's true. There have been even worse blunders.
"Got milk" was tried in Mexico, except that it meant "Are you lactating?"
My personal favorite is Purdue's slogan - "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken" - the spanish translation actually meant "It takes a hard man to arouse a chicken"
This has been on news.com for ages
I wouldn't mind if slashdot has gone back in time 3-4 days and showed this story
But its not exactly new..
"WebTV: bringing the Internet into the shallow end of the gene pool since 1995" - Martin Bishop
I appreciate your "notable" analogy, but the truth is, "no va" and "nova" are pronounced fairly similarly. On the other hand, "Notable" and "No Table" are pronounced quite differently.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
This post was copied from the previous article.
irb(main):001:0>
You marked my last post as Flamebait and rejected my last story about the secrecy behind the companies who are doing testing for the touch-screen voting but post a dupe of a previous story so knock yourselves out.
On Slashdot, moderators are just other Slashdot readers; editors are the people who run the site and have the ability to post articles. So, no, the people who mod you down (moderators, i.e. your peers) did not post this dupe. In the case of unfair moderation, meta-moderators (also just regular Slashdot readers) can mark the moderation as unfair, and the moderator loses karma, which makes them less likely to be selected as a moderator in the future.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
While the stories are funny and the point is well made, I am confused about this:
:)
Microsoft products have been banned in some of the biggest markets, including India because of eight wrongly colored pixels . . .
When coloring in 800,000 pixels on a map of India, Microsoft colored eight of them a different shade of green to represent the disputed Kashmiri territory. The difference in greens meant Kashmir was shown as non-Indian, and the product was promptly banned in India. Microsoft was left to recall all 200,000 copies of the offending Windows 95 operating system software to try and heal the diplomatic wounds. "It cost millions," Edwards said.
Er, if the region is disputed by both India and Pakistant, how is coloring them differently than undisputed India and Pakistan a wrong thing to do? One of those countries is going to be upset no matter which color is chosen, so the fair thing is to irritate them both by making the disputed region an entirely different color than both disputing countries.
Seems MS was at least nodding to India by making the disputed region a different shade of the same color used for India. So I'd think India would be pleased. Presumably Pakistan was a different color entirely, so I'd expect Pakistant to be complaining here instead of India.
Is it that Pakistan buys fewer copies of MS products so they don't matter?
AFAIK the area is still disputed. How is it "right" to have software take sides in any political dispute?
Then again, this is an indiatimes.com article. I see some potential for bias on this issue
everything in moderation
We all know Microsoft's engineering is mediocre. They are known for their marketing strength and muscle. With all this marketing you would think they can take care to map disputed territories with some sensitivity. You would think they could understand the language nuances from country to country. They certainly have the money to afford to do this!
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
This all reminds me of the hubbub about the Taiwanese flag in an old version of RedHat. I think their solution was to simply stop using flags, period.
I always get the shakes before a drop.
So now Microsoft is taking the fall for America's lacklustre level of cultural awareness. Companies do this all the time, and I'm only surprised that Microsoft havent done this a lot more, when you think of the amount of products and services it provides across the globe.
I like the way the article neglets to inform us which part of Windows 95 was to blame, or which game(s) were causing offence. Perhaps things would suddenly become understandable and cause the article to lose some of it's bashing impact had these details been presented.
The only map I can think of in '95 was the for setting the timezone, and as I remember all of that map was the same shade of green. It does sound a bit bitchy to make kashmir a special exception, so I'd like to know what part of Win95 this map was actually in, and whether other parts of the world had special shades of green too.
To see how Microsoft really feels, read this excerpt from http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,128 5890,00.html
For example when employees were arrested in Turkey because Kurdistan had been shown as a separate entity on maps of the country, a decision was taken to remove Kurdistan from all maps.
"Of course we offended Kurds by doing this but we had offended the Turks more and they were a much more important market for our products. It was a hard commercial decision, not political."
Sigs are for lusers. Hey! wait a second...
In the 1960's, what we now know as Exxon was called Enco. When they started expanding globally, they had a big misstep in Japan: the Japanese translation of "enco" is "broken-down car."
bp
Actually, calling the Asshole and Bitch is not far from the truth. After all, they did buy Windows, didn't they ?
Oh ? Is that a pirated copy ? Then you get Criminous Asshole/Bitch.
morcego
Yes, Most people call them Anonymous Cowards.
Kinda goes with the territory on this one then, doesn't it? Dupe story with dupe comments. That's funny on so many levels.
Pong is offensive as it encourges violence by depicting two large rectangles beating up a small square.
>
Then some marketing exec with no knowledge of american slang would try to sell us a small car called the Choad.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
News for Old Nerds. Stuff from yesterday we forgot about already.
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.
a little thing called Windows ME.
HAND.
Nope, "bitch" in Portuguese is "cadela" (brazilians tend to use "cachorra", but in both cases it means bitch, never girl or woman). The issue is a slightly different one. In Portugal, we use several words for "girl": "menina", "moça", "rapariga", "miúda", etc.
;-)
;-)
One of the most common ones is "rapariga" (feminin of "rapaz", which means "lad"). In Brazil, "rapariga" is usually used to describe a prostitute (although technically it means the same - a young woman).
A more interesting word is "puto". In standard Portuguese, it means "kid" (boy). In brazilian Portuguese it means "male prostitute". So, as you can imagine, when a portuguese writer (Altino Tojal) published a book called "Os putos" ("The kids"), in the 1970s, the brazilians thought Portugal (then a religious dictatorship!) was a really open society...
The feminin ("puta") does mean the same in both dialects.
Another interesting word is "Durex". In Brazil, it means sticky tape. In Portugal everyone knows it as a condom brand (although Control is more popular, and if you've used both, you know why). A couple of years ago, a (female) brazilian friend of mine came to Portugal, and needed some tape. She went to an office supply store and asked for "some Durex". The woman behind the counter looked at her as if she was some sort of nut and told her "well, if you want Durex, go to the chemist's!". She found this rather odd, but did as she was told. She walked into a pharmacy and asked for Durex. The chemist said "what type?", and she said "well, any type will do, I really need it quickly". The chamist said "well, what amount do you want?". Se held her hands about 70 cm apart and said "well, a piece about this big".
True story.
RMN
~~~
Can we have a forumcode that says "just go back and read my comments from the last 2 times this story was posted"?
Or, for slashdot editors:
Can we have a forumcode that says "just go back and read my comments from the last 2 times this story was posted"?
Can we have a forumcode that says "just go back and read my comments from the last 2 times this story was posted"?
Can we have a forumcode that says "just go back and read my comments from the last 2 times this story was posted"?
Can we have a forumcode that says "just go back and read my comments from the last 2 times this story was posted"?
-Styopa
This is the 3rd time this story has been on /. .
The second dupe happend on the same day;
a few hours after the original story was posted.
I think not. The difference in enunciation to the respective native audiences is exactly the same with both examples.
no-VA vs NO-va, and NO-ta-ble vs no-TA-ble.
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
If they're working on the localised versions, I should bloody well expect that they know the language and culture of the country they're trying to sell to.
from the debug-twice-distribute-once dept.
When they started selling the Nissan Pajero in Spain they found out that Pajero in Spanish means Wanker.
Or the Mistcurler - in German mist means manure. Not something I'd wish to stick in my hair.
-- Put crudely, the world is an extremely large problem instance. (Russel/Norvig Artificial Intelligence)
The "bitch" translation error was due to the fact that the same word means "woman" in some regional dialects and "bitch" in others. This is clearly a forgiveable mistake.
I mean, what kind of culture actually uses the terms "woman" and "bitch" interchangeably?
Oh, wait...
Microsoft has flooded Poland in win2k/xp. Just check the map in time zone setting. They didn't get banned here though
Flooding isn't quite the same as saying that part of your land belongs to a different country.
I'm sure that there would have been quite an uproar if (for example) the map showed everything west of Warsaw as being part of Germany.
the story is covered in detail on http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1286 066,00.html/
I sumitted this story atleast 3 days back and as usual for me it was rejected ;-) Keep it up GODs ;-) - I will get you some day.
Luckily Mitsubishi was smart enough to not sell Mitsubishi Pajero under that name in spanish speaking countries.
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
IMHO, one reason why there are so many duplicate stories in Slashdot is that the search engine is pretty bad. Or is is just me ? I could hardly ever find what I was looking for with the /. search form. I am not bitching (no pun intended), I just wonder if this could be improved ...
Any english speaker would put a full stop after "NO" before moving onto "table," whereas "nova" and "no va" are spoken as a single word. Further, notable and no table are pronounced differently - "no-TAH-bull" vs. "no-TAY-bull"
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Not as bad as Honda Fitta...
Maybe that's because they outsourced it to India.. Oh, wait...
how long until
Starting NOW! :)
Hmmm.
I wish to call on the slashdot people to change the icon for microsoft. I find that portraying one of it's founders and current top executives as a Borg insulting to the maturity of people here. Simply use the actual microsoft logo or something that just says "microsoft" if there are legal problems with their trademark.
I'm not trying to make this a serious conservative website about tech news and opinions, but a lot of us are open source advocates and the community is represented somewhat on this website. This site has a responsibility to the OSS community and while this Borg icon may have seemed funny years ago, I think the joke is on us now.
And while people may say how microsoft bashes linux and opensource openly, that doesn't mean we should in turn bash them with an icon. All this anti-microsoft does is give credibility to their argument that open source projects are managed and supported by a bunch of geeks in their basements, and not hardworking, intelligent companies.
Reading over the list of offenses, looks like MS ran afoul of the same virulent nationist quasi religious extremism anybody else might have. OK, the "bitch" thing is a different kind of problem.
OT -- So far, I have not read many serious posts in this thread. I imagine people are afraid of sparking religio-political flame wars by speaking plainly. That in itself is interesting, don't you think?
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
Isn't it the truth though? Aren't we all microsoft's bitches? Microsoft, at this point could just just do a massive search and replace in their software, changing the word user to bitch all over the place.
WECLOME BITCH, TO WINDOWS XP SP3
Don't expect much, don't get much, but send us all your money.
Try typing "NYC" in a couple of Microsoft fonts, wingdings and webdings.
I don't care how they try and dodge it. If you look at one of those two fonts, maybe, but not both of them. MS had themselves a practical joker.
The Mitsubishi Pajero problably didn't sell to well in Spain... pajero means wanker in Spanish
How 8 Slashdot Editors Don't Read Slashdot
Windows 95 was a product that was probably sold in India eight or nine years ago. It is not a big deal right now. Also, theeconomictimes has many times in the past carried computer-related articles that are published in other news websites a day or two before. They have a major indian presence and very less international presence. This was actually discussed on slashdot.org after which theeconomictimes picked it up a few days later. Someone picked it up from theeconomic times and posted it on ./
Is someone here trying to draw a circle ?
That's evidence that not everyone reads Snopes, or has ever heard of it. It's obvious that there are publishers, including _Red Herring_ and _Industry Week_, which use editors who don't read Snopes, including the GetCustoms.com reprinter of Industry Week, who's just repeating the same myth that you perpetuate yourself. Just like you're perpetuating the whitewash Hutton commission which smokescreened Blair's lying about Iraqi WMDs with the BBC.
The difference between the Snopes accounts, and these others, is that Snopes includes evidence countering wrong facts in the myths. Of course all media, including word of mouth, is suspect. But we can tell which are true, or at least more accurate, by attempting corroboration of independent sources. When corroboration fails, we can rely on the principle of factual consistency more than politically and economically dependent reports.
--
make install -not war
This is the *third* time this story has been posted :).
How about if Slashdot gave compensation to all us subscribers when their editors screw up again?
I read this story 3 days ago in "News Letter", a Northern Irish newsletter, when i was on holiday.
In Central American Spanish "male and female" can be translated to "macho y hembra" or "masculino y femenino". "Macho y hembra" refer mostly to animals, while "masculino y femenino" are used with humans, and are considered correct when used in, say, a fill out form. "Hembra", while not strictly a profanity sounds very rude when used on women.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
Rubber is a fourth dimensional word - old ladies think nothing of telling their grandchildren "Don't forget to wear your rubbers" (rain boots) when it rains.
:)
I guess either way, it's probably good advice. But a little shocking coming from Grandma.
It's not clear to me how "bitch" can mean "female".
It doesn't... At least, not human female...
You see, Microsoft totally dominates the human market for OS software, and has decided to start branching out to other species.
So, by "Man", they meant that in the gender-neutral form, to refer to all humans. "Bitch" actually refers to female dogs (as anyone who has ever had a few dogs can tell you, female dogs have far better linguistic capabilities than male dogs, so made a more natural choice to target "Windows for Dogs" at). Thus, no foul involved here.
And for anyone doubting this, you've seen MS add little features leading up to this ever since Windows 95 - Why, by the time they reached ME (perhaps for "Mutt Edition"?), it already ran (cue rimshot) dog-slow.
I guess I should clarify that I am referring to grandmother's in the United Statess.
Now wasting time for the two minute warning.
Which way's up? What color's blue? What if the moon fell down? What if people were little yellow squares and dogs were red circles? What's your mom's name? What's your dad's name? What is you social security number? What color is your cat? What flavor is your dog? What shape is your mailbox? So long and thanks for all the fish...
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.
"Oh, your doctor called. He says your new sense of humor is ready."
Couple of things:
1.) When complaining about somebody's defective sense of humor, don't use the old "so and so called, they have something for you" joke. I just can't muster up any offense to your comment when it's obvious you are not qualified to be a judge.
2.) I wasn't using humor in that post. Heh.
"Derp de derp."
Welcome back, my friends, to the dupe that never ends...
Ask them what the word "borders" means, and some might get that wrong too.
Apparently.
The right story is Chevy Nova. "No va" meaning "does not go".
>Oh, your doctor called.
>He says your new sense of humor is ready.
Bob Saget, Carrot Top, Jay Leno, Paulie Shore, Rob Schneider, David Spade, Yahoo Serious, and the entire writing staff for Dharma and Greg called: You're not funny.
They speak Hispanic.
there is no right way to draw that particular line.
That is 'disputed territory'. Pakistan and India both claim it. If they had colored that space in to be part of India, this same article would have appeared, almost verbatim, in www.paknews.com/. So, maybe you have to choose...literally not being able to please both, who do you piss off?
or, you could piss off both, and use a 3rd color for that area.
I seem to recall that the webdings font was intentionally done that way because of the random faux pas with the wingdings font. What if it was TCP that did that or ASP, or MSF, or RFC, or any other TLAs out there. regardless of the actual lettering used there would be the conspiracy theorists out there who would see the use of any TLA to produce that character combination in wingdings as a conspiracy by MS. just like the Q33NY "message".
In Italy there is a dish called pasta putanesca (litterally "prostitute-style pasta"). I used to work at a cafeteria which served this dish and also had many foreign students.
The Italians knew the dish and enjoyed it. The students from Latin America, however, had a tendency of gathering together and laughing at our signs....
In PHB style, when I brought this to the attention of the management, they blamed me.....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
"penne a la putanesca" prostitute-style penis"
If one wants to get really technical about it... Every country borders every other country because the embassy of a country is actual territory of that country inside another country's capital.
But I will concede that Americans are dumber than other people around the world who have the same lifestyle and level of income. Peasants are stupid and superstitious, wherever they live and regardless of whether they're driving SUVs and 4x4s. America just has more rich dumb peasants than any other country (" We's numba one! ").
Although having lived in the USA for a long time, I'm not convinced that the Americans are really as dumb as everyone else claims that they are. Many people who claim that they couldn't find the Pacific ocean on a map still have memorized thousands of sport statistics.
Ask most Americans a vague question and you will get a vague answer. We touch neither Russia nor Cuba, so whether we border those countries or not depends on your definition of "border". You have decided for everyone else that border means within a certain radius of a physical land mass belonging to the United States. I might subscribe to the definition of border as any country that touches one of our land borders. So, it's not really sad, as long as they can point out Mexico and Canada.
To give credit where credit is due, it was indeed snopes
who provides the quite helpful notable analogy.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
In what game was it that "Muslim warriors turned churches into mosques"? Without more evidence, I have a hard time believing Microsoft would create such a product.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
I wondered why, when selecting my location to adjust the time zone with Windows 95, I could click my country on the map; but with Windows 98 and latter, I have to pick my location with the selection box.
When did 70 miles off the coast beome a border? And the number I always hear is 90 miles to Cuba. If your going to be a holier-then-thou dick, at least get it right. And the reason most Americans don't know geography is because we don't give a shit. America is BIG, really big, and if your somewhere in the middle, wtf good does geography do you? For that matter, knowledge of geography is a lot less important when other people come to you, instead of the other way around.
I think you're being generous. When this story only had about 50 replies I recognised one of them from the previous time the same story was posted, so I went off to find the original. Searching for "Faulkland" in the original comments yielded no hits, so I tried searching for "bitch". Still no hits. There must have been at least 100 comments which should have been hits.
Long, long time ago I had to add French, German, & Spanish translations to an arcade game Midway produced called 280-Zzzap. (It was a "night-driving" game).
The program would rate the player's driving skills on a 1 to 5 scale. In French, the worst performance phrase was "reprendre la école", which means "go back to school". Since the game font did not have a circumflex in it, I put the phrase in as "reprendre la ecole".
The rough translation of this in French is "you're a cunt!".
We had to rev the ROMs and make sure we shipped the bad ones only to the US, England, Germany, and Spain!
Just like the Mitsubishi Pajero, which means something like wanker in spanish. but afaik it was sold under a different name in spanish-speaking regions.
Microsoft has also seen its unfortunate style of diplomacy have an effect in Korea, Kurdistan, Uruguay and to China--where a cartographical dispute saw Chinese employees hauled in front of the government.
What does my country in south america to make a diplomatic between korea, kurdistand and china, that in a way or another are somewhat close?
Seems to be closer the "WWIII: Microsoft style". A good example where with great power one don't give a shit about the great responsibility.
I hope this doesn't get modded down to "Flamebait".
Can someone help my understand why people in India and Pakistan are so
touchy about Kashmir? I really want to understand this. Sorry if the
mere asking of this question offends anyone. That is not my intent.
All I know is what I saw in the "Gandhi" movie. It seems very sad that
there is still conflict more than 50 years later...
Also a myth, however, as the Nova was never marketed in Latin America. Cheers!
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
It's true but Nova still has the same meaning as in English.
"I think this line is mostly filler"
...is KIA, dotmil jargon for "killed in action".
Actually Russia and Cuba are separated by International waters. You might as well say that we border the United Kingdom, Portugal, etc.
Nowadays there's no way to be an expert on every subject that might affect your life. Farmers in the middle of the country know farm equipment and the crops they grow. They may not know much about the tech industry, but just like we leave the food growing to them, they leave that to us. Specialization is what allows us as a society to achieve truly great things. However... Certain tidbits of information such as, "Where your ass is with respect to the planet." are arguably good for everyone to know, diplomat, farmer, and engineer alike.
I haven't seen the Microsoft India map, so I can't tell what they should have done, but with multiple countries disputing the political status of various territories, is there any way you can draw a political map that doesn't offend anyone? Some maps specifically point out which territories are disputed, trying to take a "neutral" stance between the conflicting parties, but will they still stir up emotions for merely recognizing the conflict? Is the solution really to present different "facts" to different audiences?
Among the school books I have saved is a world atlas, printed around 1970. Long after I left school, I found a small note on the African map pointing out that South-West Africa (today Namibia) was "illegally occupied by South Africa" or something to that effect, and I was a bit surprised by the strong language. In the same atlas, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were depicted as just any other republic of the USSR. It turned out that the atlas was printed in Berlin, by an East German publisher (though entirely in Swedish). When I first studied American maps of Europe, I saw a similar note about the Soviet annexation of the Baltic republics not being recognized by the United States.
No matter how or where you turn, one man's fact will be somebody else's myth. Good thing governments don't get to define where the coastlines are, or physical maps would be politically biased too.
In Slashdot's haste to obsessively bash Microsoft, they reposted the mistranslation article when the other one was still on the front page. It was removed after about 10 minutes. Here we see it appear yet again in a new form. Why? To meet the daily quota of "laugh at Microsoft", I guess.
rhymes with 'Fozzie'. Those are voiced sibilants.
GENERAL PUBLIC SIGNATURE (GPS) Any replies (derivatives) of this post must also use the GPS
Flamebait? Flamebaiting who exactly?
I thought India's policy to Pakistan was the old US-Soviet Mutually Assured Destruction writ small. So their official government position *requires* that they have:
1) Nukes
2) The willingness to use them
Geesh... Next thing you know referring to body temperature as 98.6 degrees will be flamebait because of those delicate European sensibilities that will be offended.
--Rob
Macho / Hembra = male/female applied to animals. Masulino / Femenino = generic male/female So, I think what Microsoft got wrong in here was that they translated "female" to "hembra". And saying a woman is an "hembra" is just about the same than saying she's an animal. i.e. bitch. But honestly, we do need TRUE LOCALIZATION, not a stupid encarta-like dictionary. I've seen many mistranslations in american products. Like using "vosotros" (Iberic term for "you") instead of "ustedes" (latin american term for "you"). Hey what am I complaining about? It's Microsoft - they won't listen to suggestions anyway.
How much of international waters can you squeeze into the 2.5 mile strait that separates the Diomede Islands from each other? Ok, it's not a land boundary, but a maritime one, so maybe it doesn't count anyway. Now look for a weird case in Malaysia, two parts of the same country divided by international waters (somewhat like Hawaii and mainland USA), each sharing land boundaries with two other countries (not at all like Hawaii)...
the Pinto is an acronym... Practically Impossible Not To Oxplode
Notice that there was no recall to lock-down the netbios features.... lol, evil bastards.
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
Looks like Billy Gates and the XP team watch their fair share of Dave Chappelle.
Haven't we already seen this story on slashdot just a few days ago.
Come on now. I guess it must go like this.
EDITOR: muhahahahaw! We will Get them!
INTERN: How so grand master pumba?!?!
EDITOR: We will post a dup and make them all beg for more!!!! MUHAHAHAHAW!
INTERN: Yes sir. by Jolly I belive you have it there. the secret to CmdrTaco's Success!
j/k
why are obvious non slashdot readers allowed to submit stories anyways? it seems the people to blame are those submitting the dupes. If they read slashdot they would know the damn thing was the third dupe
did you forget to take your meds?
My first post got modded down, but seriously, how does Linux/KDE/Gnome handle this? Has Linux been banned anywhere because of similar issues? I've seen several usability articles posted, but what about cultural references?
That one was a real stretch, though, and bullshit. That was like, someone looking at the font and trying to come up with a string that would create the visual message.
Scarier is when she MEANS it the other way...
I would occasionally bring my girlfriend (now wife) over to Sunday dinner at her house. One day, as we were leaving, she kisses us both goodbye and says "Now you be good... and if you can't, name it after me".
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Neither are any of those people... but Dharma sure as hell is a hot babe.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Whatever about the subject of this story, having such a glaring error on the map (that's presumably gone unchanged from goodness knows when - win 3.1?) REALLY means Microsoft should hang their heads in shame. Man, if Ireland was missing for example, I'd be rightly %&*^ed off.
Wow, I really can't believe this. Someone confirm to me that it's a new map only around since 2K as suggested by the parent post!
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
It wasn't unreasonable to use "hembra" for female; the standard Spanish translation of the Bible itself uses "varon y hembra" in Genesis for "male and female". From what I understand, it was only in one country where "hembra" is used disparagingly.
But of course we shoul argue over colo[u]r!! Spelling is IMPORTANT!
;-\
The word is spelt colour: only a [blank] would spell it color. - Damn, I just did it myself.
TTFN.
people in the Caribbean (UFWI?). Then we can sue MS and their suffocatingly inaccurate MS Encarta trash... uh encyclopedia that has everyone thinking 90% of us speak Creole.
Creole = French creole. No they don't speak it in Jamaica and a bunch of other countries.
I am going to call it Dickens Cider after the Bob & Tom skit. Because women always love a big Dickens Cider!
In the line of bad translation or cultural mistakes done by big company there's this one from here in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. When they released the movie "The Cell" featuring J.Lo in DVD and video, all you could see in the rental clubs were walls covered with J.Lo's face bearing the title "La Cellule".
Thing is, Cellule is the name we give dumb girl around here, all in the look none in the brain, damn they translated it alright!
Well obviously the problem was the size. In New Zealand there is a town proudly named "Urenui", which means "big penis", along with the school and shops etc.. I wonder if that will count against passing legislation to make street signs bilingual :-)
The guy was writing about Brazil. While it's true, "No Va" means "It doesn't go" in Spanish, this probably wouldn't mean jack to anyone in Brazil - because they speak Portuguese!
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
NEW DELHI: Just when the antitrust case went in sleeping mode, Microsoft managed to get into yet another fiasco. This time the software giant is hit by information misrepresentation or shall we say goof up.
The lack of multicultural savvy attitude cost the software giant millions of dollars.
Microsoft products have been banned in some of the biggest markets, including India because of eight wrongly colored pixels, a bad choice of music and a bad English-to-Spanish dictionary.
Tom Edwards, head of Microsoft's geopolitical strategy team told a conference in Glasgow, how one of the biggest companies in the world managed to offend one of the biggest countries in the world with a software slip-up, CNet Asia reported.
When coloring in 800,000 pixels on a map of India, Microsoft colored eight of them a different shade of green to represent the disputed Kashmiri territory. The difference in greens meant Kashmir was shown as non-Indian, and the product was promptly banned in India. Microsoft was left to recall all 200,000 copies of the offending Windows 95 operating system software to try and heal the diplomatic wounds. "It cost millions," Edwards said.
If this was not enough, Microsoft used chanting of the Koran used as a soundtrack for a computer game, which led to great offence to the Saudi Arabia government. The company later issued a new version of the game without the chanting, while keeping the previous editions in circulation because US staff thought the slip wouldn't be spotted, but the Saudi government banned the game and demanded an apology. The game was then withdrawn.
The software giant managed to further offend the Saudis by creating another game in which Muslim warriors turned churches into mosques. That game was also withdrawn.
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.
Microsoft has also seen its unfortunate style of diplomacy have an effect in Korea, Kurdistan, Uruguay and to China--where a cartographical dispute saw Chinese employees hauled in front of the government.
Edwards said that staff members are now sent on geography courses to try to avoid such mishaps. "Some of our employees, however bright they may be, have only a hazy idea about the rest of the world," he said.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I guess freedom of speech is only for westerners...
I have this story about Tide (washing detergent).
The Ad had 3 photos -
Dirty Clothes ==> Wash in Tide ==> Clean Clothes.
(This was in the 3 horizontal panels).
Unfortunately, in Arabic countries they read right
to left.
Probably an Urban Legend.
...make me want to release a quad opteron motherboard, and call it "Lamer's Excuse".
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Stuff is going to get through since checking all of the hundreds of thousands of words in a lexical resource is time consuming. These resources are commissioned from companies IN Spanish speaking countries, just as the infamous "Anti-Arabes" spel-checker suggestion was generated by a DLL written by a French company. None of these companies stood up to take responsibility for the stuff they licensed to Microsoft.
My youngest sons response: "Suck shit you pack of idiots - but it was probably Bills grog money for the weekend that got wasted"
True story:
I was had a trouble with a game on the dreamcast and went on to ask on the Sega board about "the level where monsters jump out of a glowing pile."
Look at that phrase. Do you see anything obscene or insulting in it? Well, Sega's lame censorship filter did.
Let me narrow your choices down a bit. The offending part was: "of a glowing".
Still don't see anything offensive? How about this: "o F A G lowing".
Yep, the software was "smart" enough to figure out that if you chop and combine parts of _three_ different words, you end up with something offensive.
Geesh. I mean, not even Beavis and Butthead would have made that association. Thank God we have idiot programmers to make it for us, eh?
So, yes, I believe that the same vigilant(e) piece of software would have seen the "fart" in "of art".
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The Toyota MR2 was renamed the "Coupe MR" for the French market, because MR2 in French sounds a lot like "merdeux", French for "shitty", n'est ce pas?
.
They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight
Why does india's law regarding the border of its country mean no-one is allowed to draw the de-facto border of it's time zone? they weren't saying "this is india's border", they were saying "within the highlighted region, people set their clocks like this." If India has a problem with that, they should send troops in to enforce clock settings in the disputed region.
maybe MS should just have written something to the effect of "time zones do not necessarily coincide with national borders"
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
"hembra" and "mujer"....
Well yes I do, but that is because I am a native Spanish speaker (the difference is even more complicated than what the article implies, hembra is an accepted term in some countries like Cuba, it is completely unnaceptable in Mexico).
And that is exactly the point. I am not an expert in Spanish language by any means but would raise my eyebrows if being confornted with such lousy terms. If you are a global monopoly that is intending to saturate the world with your rubishware the least you can do is hire one Spanish language erudit (which normally earn paltry salaries) and ask him to check your user interfaces.
That is the bloody point, not is Joe Programmer or even Manager knows any differences. That is why there are experts and ther is no excuse for no using their services.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
whoosh! the parent post meant "even these supremely unfunny people think you suck"
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
I went over my Bathead the moment in which Batslashdot became the torchbearer of the holly FLOSS movement after being one of the steamiest corners for gossiping about IT on the Internet.
I swear you not that this sudden change can be blamde on the Penguin. The bastard.
Translation: bullshit, get a grip.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Or an expert in Spanish language. Then they would have known that you can't create a blanket version of their software for Spanish speakign countries or would have made the appropriate localizations.
But of course they did not, and the fanboys are excusing their typical lack of profesionalism (specially for a company of their size)...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Check this out.
Eat at Joe's.
I'm sure there would be plenty of protest in the U.S. if someone released a picture editor called "Gay Paint"
But those who complained would be struck down with fury as bigots.
It would depend on who released it and how widely released it was, since rape simulators, sex games and extremely violent games get released regurlarly. If the game was racy, few would dare complain. If it was a regular paint program, it would be a funny news story.
"Gay" was a good example some years ago, when people in old England still used it to mean "happy"/"fun" while it meant "homosexual" in the USA.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
"Cuál es su sexo: no especificado, varón o zorra?".
Which is a bit less polite than the word "bitch" in english..
Nope, I don't. They're pronounced noticeably differently.
"Nova" is pronounced all together, with the emphasis on "o"
"No va" is pronounced with a pause between the words, and the emphasis is on "a". As snopes says, this is more or less equivalent to "notable" vs "not able", or "no table".
Most people probably would relate "nova" to "supernova" more than "doesn't go". Also, since Spanish comes from Latin, "nova" isn't such a strange thing, and quite related to a few words like "novedad" for example.
Besides, it's a stupid criticism. "Har har, if you pronounce it incorrectly it means 'doesn't go'". Now, "pajero" (wanker), or "laputa" (la puta - the whore) is somewhat more inconvenient to say in public.
Note that "laputa" is different from "nova", since "laputa" means absolutely nothing in Spanish by itself, and people would pronounce it exactly the same as "la puta", except without a pause.
"It wasn't a comment on whether you can produce humour, but whether you can recognise it."
If that was a joke (as opposed to simply a lame MS bash) then I'm not the one who needs a sense of humor installed.
"Derp de derp."
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
You are foolishly pronouncing the words in an English fashion. What about the fact that the native speakers in question were Spanish do you fail to understand?
Ask a Spaniard to pronounce "no va", then ask him to pronounce "nova". Until then, just believe those of us that know. Ok?
Furthermore, I believe I do know how English words are pronounced.
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
Wow, did you ever miss the boat.
No table -> noTAYble
Notable -> NOtable
No va -> noVA
Nova -> NOva
You do not have the literacy to participate in this conversation if you have thus far failed to understand that this is what has been said - indeed by more people than just me, if you care to read any of the other comments about the same subject.
My original point about the enunciation (look the word up) in the context of the native speaker still stands - ie, the difference between the words in the respective language is *exactly* the same for the respective native speakers.
That you nitpick about the "tay" sound in table is clear indication that you are unable to grasp the point of the comparison.
Any bloody moron knows that it's the intonation of the syllables in successive words that separate, differentiate and give meaning to them. This concept applies wholly to all these examples, including "no va", "nova", "notable", "no table", "not able", etc.
Refrain from your idiotic nitpicking and choose to agree on this point, which has been the actual topic of this thread all along.
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
"Dupe" obviously enough comes from "duplicate". Making three of something is making it in "triplicate", so obviously a gaff of this sort should be called for what it is: TRIPE.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
As a professional translator, I hear you and your concerns. This is something I and others in my field spend significant time studying.
However, I think you come close to hitting the proverbial nail when you speak of "chimp attract," in that the problem you speak of has two sides to it. On the one hand, you have
and then on the other you have
From what you say, and from what little I can recall of OS/2's timing, it seems to me that OS/2 2.0 was developed when people were still struggling with these ideas, and had not yet hit upon the dichotomy. Basically, OS/2 sounds like a wonderfully internationalized product, but also one that was only marginally localized, if at all.
I18n is the end of things the initial programmers need to worry about -- coding cleanly, i.e. hard-coding as little culturally-specific material as possible. The properly internationalized product is a bit like an empty apartment -- something that handles all the right things an apartment should do, with a roof and walls and maybe even electricity if we're getting fancy. L10n, on the other hand, is where you can let your sales and/or UI teams have their fun, making sure of course that the project uses the right team for each target market. A properly localized product is that same apartment decorated (and possibly even furnished) to appeal to specific tastes.
Probably more than you wanted to know, but that's probably why OS/2 2.0 was so damn dull -- it was a useful apartment, but quite drab; nowhere you'd want to spend your time relaxing. This seems like more evidence against the "one size fits all" mentality, in that you can't really please everyone all the time with the same thing. Each to their own. This is some of where Linux shines with its immensely malleable UI, and note that Microsoft too took the hint and saw fit to implement UI themability in XP. Sure, it's only eye-candy, but then so are an awful lot of the things we crave in life: beautiful vistas outside our windows, lava lamps, wallpaper. The "chimp attract," if you will.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
You seem to be conflating spell-checkers and other tools. Microsoft does not produce the Spanish spell-checker and lexicon: it is licensed sealed and intact from other companies (check the copyright notice on the files). There is no machine translation of any kind involved.