NEW DELHI: After Karnataka chief ministerSiddaramaiah complained about the translation tool’s error, Meta apologised to the Congress leader and confirmed they were resolving the issue.“We fixed an issue that briefly caused this inaccurate Kannada translation. We apologize that this happened,” a Meta spokesperson told PTI.Meta’s Kannada auto translation changed the whole message when the chief minister’s office, on Tuesday, posted a condolence message on Facebook and Instagram, mourning the death of veteran actress B Sarojadevi. Meta’s English auto-translation read: “Chief Minister Siddaramaiah passed away yesterday multilingual star, senior actress B. Took darshan of Sarojadevi’s earthly body and paid his last respects.”
‘Faulty auto-translation is distorting facts and misleading users’
Angry with the mistake, Siddaramaiah took his X account and said, “Faulty auto-translation of Kannada content on Meta platforms is distorting facts and misleading users. This is especially dangerous when it comes to official communication.”The chief minister emphasised that social media platforms need to demonstrate responsibility, particularly regarding official communications, and advised citizens about the frequent inaccuracies in platform translations.On July 16, the CM’s media advisor, K V Prabhakar, sent an email to Meta expressing serious concerns about the automatic translation of Kannada content on Facebook and Instagram.“My media adviser has formally written to Meta urging immediate correction. Social media platforms must act responsibly. I caution citizens to be aware that translations shown are often inaccurate. Such negligence by tech giants can harm public understanding and trust,” the CM said in a post on X. The state government requested Meta to temporarily disable the auto-translation feature for Kannada content until translation accuracy improves significantly.Users encounter machine translations on Facebook and Instagram in various contexts, including public biographical information and specific content pieces.