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Babelfish Sparks Minor Diplomatic Row

Posted by Zonk on from the careful-how-you-type-that dept.

Stony Stevenson writes with a link to a cautionary tale on the ITnews site. A group of journalists heading to The Netherlands were gathering some information prior to the trip. They sent off an email to the Dutch foreign ministry asking some questions, but as they weren't native speakers they needed some help. Unfortunately, they turned to Babelfish for official correspondence. "The beginning of the email read: 'Helloh bud, enclosed five of the questions in honor of the foreign minister: The mother your visit in Israel is a sleep to the favor or to the bed your mind on the conflict are Israeli Palestinian.'"

1 of 331 comments (clear)

  1. Re:They're only journalists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    There was no overreaction.

    According to local reporters here is what happenened: 5 Israeli journalists were preparing to go to The Netherlands. One of them, who (it turned out) didnt speak any English, was tasked with sending questions ahead. He used Babelfish to translate the Hebrew. Unfortunately, in Hebrew the word for "of" is close to the word for "mother". So, lots of "mother" in the text. Dutch diplomats were puzzled (I've read the text, it looked a bit like "all your mother belong to us") and asked for clarification. After which the other journalists found out and it was reported.

    All in all, no big incident (just mild curiosity), but the journalists involved were very ashamed when it all came out and seem to have postponed their trips for the moment. Too bad, could have been fun having them on talkshows :)