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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?
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
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."
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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.
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 post was copied from the previous article.
irb(main):001:0>
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...
*sigh*
Just stop plugging this stuff already. As somebody who has lived in Spain for the last 14 years I can tell you with 100% certainty that "nova" and "no va" are pronounced differently, and nobody says "no va" referring to cars here anyway.
The region isn't disputed by India and Pakistan. Both India and Pakistan "know" that the territory belongs to them. It's just a matter of convincing everyone else that they are right.
Yes, Most people call them Anonymous Cowards.
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.
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
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
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...
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.
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?
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.
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.
Welcome back, my friends, to the dupe that never ends...
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.
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!
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.
The original Age of Empires includes "priest" units that can "convert" enemy units and buildings -- i.e., causing the target (say, a temple) to change sides. Thus I could take a Persian or Egyptian priest and convert Roman and Greek units to my side.
No matter what you do in life, it will offend someone, somewhere. ;)
All about me
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