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Why is WeChat translating the Canadian flag emoji into “He’s in prison”?

A glitch in the translation tool for Tencent’s messaging app generates unusual results

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Why is WeChat translating the Canadian flag emoji into “He’s in prison”?
This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Emoji transcend languages, so they usually don’t require translation. But WeChat will do it for you anyway if you’re typing in Chinese, with some pretty bizarre results. 

Tencent’s popular messaging app comes with a built-in translator. So you can tap on any Chinese messages to get an instantaneous English translation. Most of the time it works fine, but it’s different when you throw emoji into the mix.

While emoji by themselves don’t translate into anything, when they’re accompanied by a Chinese message, some emoji appear to be associated with specific words or phrases.

I'm so sorry, says WeChat. (Picture: WeChat)
I'm so sorry, says WeChat. (Picture: WeChat)

Flag emoji give some especially strange results: 

Some flag emoji bring up seemingly random names: 

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