Social media giant Meta, run by Mark Zuckerberg, has apologised for inaccurately translating Kannada, claiming that it has fixed the issue. Meta’s apology comes days after Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah raised concerns over wrong auto-translation of Kannada texts on its platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.
Siddaramaiah had earlier raised serious concerns about Kannada content being wrongly translated on Meta platforms like Facebook and Instagram, saying it was leading to distortion of facts that were misleading to users.
“We fixed an issue that briefly caused this inaccurate Kannada translation. We apologize that this happened,” a Meta spokesperson said.
Meta’s apology came after the Chief Minister’s office posted in Kannada about Siddaramaiah paying respects B Saroja Devi. Meta translated it as, “Chief Minister Siddaramaiah passed away yesterday multilingual star, senior actress B Took darshan of Sarojadevi’s earthly body and paid his last respects.”
What did Siddaramaiah say?
Slamming Meta, Siddaramaiah noted that social media platforms should be acting responsibly, especially when it deals with official communication. He also warned citizens to be aware that translations on Fecebook and Intagram may be inaccurate.
“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. My media advisor has formally written to Meta urging immediate correction,” Siddaramaiah posted on ‘X’.
“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,” he added.
In an email sent to Meta on July 16, the chief minister’s media advisor, K V Prabhakar, raised serious concerns on behalf of the CM regarding the automatic translation of Kannada content on Facebook and Instagram.
The Karnataka government has asked Meta to temporarily suspend the auto-translation feature for Kannada content until translation accuracy is reliably improved.
Machine translations are shown to users in various instances on Facebook and Instagram, including public biographical info and specific pieces of content.
In the case of Kannada auto-translation, Meta’s AI machine translation model provided a machine translation error which caused inaccurate Kannada translations in Facebook– which the company claims to have been fixed now.