Facebook translates Hindi cuss word to 'Muslim' in shocking blunder

The social media has emerged as a platform for people to interact beyond the boundaries of nationality, religion, race and economic background. While awareness campaigns have been able to start productive debates through social media, people have also been abused and trolls have often hijacked discussions.

Facebook is the major space for interaction between people but also has faced flak in the past for pulling down breast cancer awareness videos and for pulling down sketches against the establishment. But it recently landed itself in a controversy when it translated an Indian cuss word to Muslim.

Facebook offers to translate sentences typed in regional languages to English for the convenience of users, but when a user typed “Maro Mada*c**d” in devanagri script, Facebook translated it to “Die Muslim”.

The same word in different sentences was translated to 'Muslim' (Photo: Facebook)

While expletives are often used to abuse people on the basis of their religion, the word ‘Mada*c**d’ translates to ‘Mother****er’ but the error on part of Facebook is a very disastrous one given the state of communal tensions in India.

Here the word used for members of a party was translated to 'Muslims' (Photo: Facebook)

The issue sparked off an outrage on social media and Facebook released a statement saying that it was a bug which gave incorrect translations of cuss words. They added that the translation has been corrected and the said word is now translated as ‘Idiot’, while the team is working on ways to avoid such unfortunate situations.