Facebook Apology To Chinese President Xi Jinping

Chinese President Xi Jinping's overseas visit to Myanmar (Facebook Myanmar State Counselor Office)

JAKARTA - Facebook apologized for the mistranslation of the name of the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, into a vulgar word. The mistranslation occurred in a Burmese-language post when the Chinese leader was on a working visit to Myanmar.

Quoting the BBC, this error was exposed on the second day of Xi's state visit to Myanmar. During the visit Xi and Myanmar's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, signed a number of infrastructure agreements.

This Burmese text post was first published on the Facebook page of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi. If you use the automatic translator feature on the Facebook page, every time President Xi Jinping's name is written in Burmese, it changes to "Mr Shithole" when translated in English.

"President of China, Mr. Shithole, signed a guest record of the house of representatives," read the upload of the announcement of Xi Jinping's arrival in Myanmar when translated in English.

Capture screen of vulgar translation of Facebook (The Sun) posts

Facebook admits that the vulgar translation was caused by technical errors in its features. "We will fix the technical problem that caused the incorrect translation from Burmese to English on Facebook," Facebook said in its official statement.

"This should not have happened and we are taking steps to ensure it does not happen again. We sincerely apologize to anyone who took offense at this incident," he continued.

Facebook said they did not have Xi Jinping's name in the Burmese translation data. In such cases, usually the system will guess and replace with words that have the same syllable.

The technology company then tested the Burmese word, and any other words starting with "xi" and "shi" in the official Burmese language. Both use the same characters, which are also translated as "shithole".

Myanmar language instructor at the University of California, Kenneth Wong said that President Xi Jinping's name sounds similar to 'chi kyin phyin' which roughly translates to 'fecal poo pits' in Myanmar.

This is not the first time Facebook's translator system has made blunders when translating Myanmar into English. Previously Facebook translated anti-Rohingya posts in Myanmar as 'I can't have a rainbow in Myanmar'.

The people of Myanmar are known to like Facebook's existence. The platform is the most popular site for news, entertainment and conversation categories. In fact, many people equate Facebook as the internet. Politicians and local government bodies also use Facebook to deliver official statements and announcements.