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Translation mistakes embarrass Tencent at high-profile meeting
Tencent used software to display real-time translation at Boao Forum attended by Xi Jinping
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This article originally appeared on ABACUS
Humans may not need to worry about losing their jobs to Tencent’s software translator any time soon, after it made a less than satisfactory debut at the high-profile Boao Forum.
Known as Asia’s Davos, the Boao Forum is a gathering of government officials and business leaders from around the world. This year the keynote speech was delivered by Chinese president Xi Jinping to an audience that included Christine Lagarde and Ban Ki-moon.
During the forum, Tencent’s software displayed live translation on screens at the event itself, and also in a WeChat mini program.
But it doesn’t appear to have worked very well.
In several widely circulated screenshots on social media, the software produced meaningless results, showing scrambled characters and repetitive words, and sometimes broken Chinese.
For example, it translated the “Belt and Road” Initiative -- one of Beijing’s most prized projects -- as “a road and a waistband.” Tencent blamed the speaker for this, saying it was because they said “Road and Belt” instead, confusing the software.
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