{"id":22024,"date":"2015-11-03T15:14:31","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T20:14:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=22024"},"modified":"2015-11-03T16:01:07","modified_gmt":"2015-11-03T21:01:07","slug":"mt-story-of-the-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=22024","title":{"rendered":"MT story of the month"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arika Okrent, \"Translation Error Announces 'Clitoris Festival' in Spain<\/a>\", Mental Floss<\/em> 11\/2\/2015:<\/p>\n

The town of As Pontes in northwestern Spain has held a festival to celebrate the local leafy green delicacy\u00a0of grelo<\/em>, or broccoli rabe, since 1981. This year, visitors who went to the festival website hoping to find useful information were surprised by the announcement of a \"Clitoris Festival\" and the claim that \"the clitoris is one of the typical products of Galician cuisine.\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Municipal spokesman Monserrat Garc\u00eda explained<\/a><\/u> that the mistake was the result of automatic Google translation from the local language of\u00a0Galician\u00a0into Castilian\u00a0Spanish.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The source of the story: \"Cuando \u00abo grelo\u00bb se convierte en \u00abel cl\u00edtoris\u00bb<\/a>\", La Voz de Galicia<\/em> 10\/31\/2015.<\/p>\n

Arika's Mental Floss<\/em> column<\/a> offers screen shots of the translation<\/a>, and explains why the translation is\u00a0perfectly logical (for an algorithm with no common sense…).<\/p>\n

The Spanish-language web page\u00a0for La Feria del Grelo of As Pontes<\/a>\u00a0now simply uses the term \"grelo\", and Google Translate no longer translates grelo as \"clitoris\"<\/a>, in the cited context.<\/p>\n

But can it really be true that in Galicia, which after all is part of Spain, the people responsible for creating that web page needed to use Google Translate to go from Galician to Spanish? And then didn't recognize that \"La Feria del Clitoris\" was problematic?<\/p>\n

Good news for the health of minority languages in Spain, if so.<\/p>\n

But it seems improbable. I haven't seen a screenshot of the alleged festival\u00a0web page (which anyhow could be faked) — my guess is that it's one of those \"wouldn't it be funny if they did this\" kind of jokes…<\/p>\n

Arika Okrent quotes a named \"municipal spokesman\", though only via the \u00a0link to La Voz de Galicia<\/em>. The Guardian quotes the same official, and provides\u00a0a few\u00a0direct quotes — Asifa Kassam, \"Google Translate error sees Spanish town advertise clitoris festival<\/a>\", The Guardian<\/em> 11\/3\/2015:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was quite a surprise,\u201d Montserrat Garc\u00eda, the town\u2019s spokesperson, told the Guardian. \u201cAt first, we didn\u2019t believe what we were seeing.\u201d […]<\/span><\/p>\n

Officials in As Pontes are considering filing a formal complaint with Google. Garc\u00eda said: \u201cThey should recognise Galician and translate it accurately.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Google Translate has since changed the translation, with grelo now said to mean \u201cbrote\u201d or sprout. But Garc\u00eda remains dissatisfied: \u201cIt\u2019s still not the best way of describing grelo, as it is a vegetable from the turnip family.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Town officials have turned their backs on Google Translate, but there has been an upside to the embarrassing error, Garc\u00eda said, as it caused a surge of interest in this year\u2019s festival. \u201cIt\u2019s become a means \u2013 albeit a very odd means \u2013 of promoting our festival.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But the Guardian reporter was apparently working from Madrid. So I'm reserving judgment — it's either a real-life funny mistranslation, or a well-executed prank based on a potential mistranslation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arika Okrent, \"Translation Error Announces 'Clitoris Festival' in Spain\", Mental Floss 11\/2\/2015: The town of As Pontes in northwestern Spain has held a festival to celebrate the local leafy green delicacy\u00a0of grelo, or broccoli rabe, since 1981. This year, visitors who went to the festival website hoping to find useful information were surprised by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lost-in-translation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22024"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22035,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22024\/revisions\/22035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}