Words fail me

[rivkat]

Though not, apparently, as badly as they fail Microsoft:

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.

More here. What with that and the Olympics ridiculously trying to control who links to the official Athens site, I don't know what the world is coming to. The latter is just so preposterous that I'm linking to the site simply to point out how silly that "policy" is.

Comments

[iocaste212.livejournal.com]

Re: Microsoft.

I love it. Fucking brilliant. Leave as is. I'm proud to be a bitch.

[rhiannonhero.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm a bitch. W/o a doubt. ;)

Microsoft

[laceymcbain.livejournal.com]

OMG, trust Microsoft to create software with "an unfortunate error in translation" as part of the standard set-up. Perhaps they could just change it to "goddess" - I'd be happy (although I've been known to answer to bitch as well!) *g*

[cschick.livejournal.com]

For that Spanish error: with the various ways that the language has split into various dialects, it's hard to create a "Spanish" translation of anything. If it's Mexican Spanish, you'll manage to insult the Spanish (from Spain) and maybe the Jamaicans, Puerto Ricans, and etc. If a US-trained translator has learned formal Spanish (which is basically the Spanish spoken in Spain) it's quite possible not to know that the word that means woman in formal Spanish means bitch in one of the South American dialects.

At my last job, we had a Mexican translator who did our Spanish translations (technical and training materials for an international organization) and the Spaniards often bitched about the translations . . . even after they were gone over by a committee which had Spanish-speakers from several different regions on it.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Very interesting -- though I'm a bit disturbed by the idea of a dialect that adapts the word for "woman" to mean "bitch." It reminds me a little of the way some people in DC use the word "female" -- the usage is not quite as denigrating as "bitch," but it's definitely a way to demean the subject.

[cschick.livejournal.com]

(reposted to fix HTML mistake)

Oh . . . didn't look at the article before I commented. It's a more condense version of a Guardian article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1286066,00.html) I read last week, and the explanation of the screw-up wasn't included.

From Guardian:
The Spanish version of Windows used the word Hembra - meaning "woman" in Spain - for choosing gender. But in some Central American republics, notably Nicaragua, the word is an insult meaning "bitch". The programme was changed.

The evolution of the word is interesting, and disturbing. The question I've had and hadn't had time to research since I read the Guardian article: what is the "generic" term for woman in Nicaragua?

(The evolution of information from one article to the next is interesting too . . . it seems that details that would have made MS look less stupid aren't in the news.com version.)

[paminateller.livejournal.com]

I came over here from some friend's Lj.

Well, the "generic" word for woman in Nicaragua is "mujer", we only use the word "hembra" to refer to female animals.

You don't call a woman hembra, it's highly offensive and the actual word for bitch "perra" is even worse.

Hope that clears it up.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure the extra details make MS look any less stupid, actually. They identify the country, and the article makes clear that Americans aren't exactly number one in geography. What I get from both stories is that MS doesn't have the kind of quality control needed for an international operation its size, which doesn't surprise me.

[cschick.livejournal.com]

What I get from the second article that I didn't see in the first is that many of the "geography-related" problems were political rather than necessarily related to a lack of knowledge about geography.

No matter what how you handle the Jammu-Kashmir region--even if you make it a "separate" region, as MS originally did--you're going to be wrong in someone's eyes. You have to figure out who is going to cause less trouble. Here, MS finally decided that it was more important to be in India's good graces, even if the region is indicated as separate on some "official" sources.

Several other examples offered were the same: do you anger the Turks or the Kurds? Do you angry Taiwan (by only recognizing it as part of China) or China (where it's illegal to recognize Taiwan as an entity separate from China)? Making Kurdistan a separate entity on a map and thus angering Turkey isn't about a lack of knowledge about geography, or even proof that you didn't look toward an "official" source for your map. It's a lack of understanding about how the politics of current governments affect the accuracy of maps, and how maps produced by different organizations lead to differing boundaries in disputed areas.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Quite well said -- it's just that, if MS had asked almost any Indian before releasing the product, I expect it would have been alerted to the problem. That's a quality control problem. You're absolutely right that "geography" in the sense of physical landscape isn't the problem, but ignorance of landscape and ignorance of related political issues go hand and hand, so I didn't see such a big difference between the two articles.

[iocaste212.livejournal.com]

That might be a little unfair. There have been legions of incidents where unfortunately obscene or insulting translations resulted when Americans sought to do business abroad. WSJ had an article on it, once, which I'm sure you could pull up on Westlaw.