lauren@vortex.com
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2017 15:40:57 -0700
https://gizmodo.com/palestinian-man-arrested-after-facebook-auto-translates-1819782902
A Palestinian construction worker was arrested by Israeli police after
Facebook incorrectly translated the text of one of his posts. Haaretz
reports that the man uploaded a picture from his job at a construction
site with the text "good morning" in Arabic. When officers used Facebook's
automatic translation service to read the post, the text was mistranslated
as "attack them" in Hebrew and "hurt them" in English. According to
Haaretz, Arabic speakers said the "English transliteration used by
Facebook is not an actual word in Arabic but could look like the verb 'to
hurt' -- even though any Arabic speaker could clearly see the
transliteration did not match the translation." No Arabic-speaking
officers reportedly saw the post prior to the man's arrest. He was
released after several hours of questioning.