Google Translate embarrasses Castilian-speaking population by translating ‘rapini festival’ as ‘clitoris festival’

A Google Translate goof up turned out to be a blunder when “rapini festival” was translated to “clitoris festival.”

The Galician town of As Pontes was accidentally shown to be celebrating the “clitoris festival” instead of “rapini,” which is a local leaf vegetable. The rapini festival is celebrated every year in Galicia, Spain and the festival is known as “Feira do grelo” in Galician. Google unintentionally promoted “clitoris festival” on the town’s website.

The news of this major error by Google Translate spread like wildfire when people visited the website to find out more about the festival. The information was originally written in Galician but was translated into Castilian Spanish.

The glitch was discovered by Castilian-speaking rapini fan who found that the details of the festivals were given under the name of “clitoris festival.” The word “gerlo” was translated to “clitoris” and the description read as, "The clitoris is one of the typical products of Galician cuisine. Since 1981 ... the festival has made the clitoris one of the star products of its local gastronomy," according to ABC.

According to the Guardian, "Feria do grelo" festival was translated to "Feria clítoris" in Spanish. The town’s spokeswoman Montserrat García told the publication that they were surprised to see this and at first it was hard for them to believe what they were seeing. She also pointed out the possibility that it could have been on the website for months but only came into notice last week as the festival was fast approaching.

García termed this mistake as an “embarrassing error” and said that it has led to an increase in the interest of people towards this year’s festival. “It’s become a means – albeit a very odd means – of promoting our festival,” she said.

A Google spokesperson clarified the issue and said, “Since the translations are generated by machines, not all translation will be perfect and sometimes there will be mistakes or mistranslations. If people come across incorrect or inappropriate translations, they can let us know about them and we’ll be happy to fix them as soon as possible.”

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