It seems that Google has just embarrassed residents of the Galician-speaking town As Pontes, located in the northwest region of Spain, as Google Translate mistakenly promoted a local culinary festival as a "clitoris festival."
Residents of As Pontes annually observe the rapini festival, in celebration of the town's local specialty, a local leaf vegetable akin to spinach.
Information about this local festival was primarily written in Galician on the town's official website, according to The Local. However, the town hall has likewise decided to put a Castillian Spanish version of the festival's description, in a bid to cover a wider audience. In the process, Google Translate somehow interpreted "grelo," which means "turnip greens," into the Spanish word "clitoris."
"Google translate recognized our Galician word grelo as Portuguese and translated into the Spanish clítoris," explains Monserrat García, the town hall's spokesperson.
García says it was just on Thursday, Oct. 29, that a town hall's staff uncovered the error on the town hall's website. She also says that the local officials later found out that Google translated every mention of the word grelo into clitoris on any website.
García adds the town is considering on filing an official complaint for the tech titan in hopes to properly recognize the Galician language, so this mistake will never happen again down the road.
"It's a very serious error on the part of Google," she says.
The spokesperson admits they were shocked with what had been transpired.
"At first, we didn't believe what we were seeing," she recounts.
A Google spokesperson, however, has defended the online app. He says since the translations are produced by machines, not all translation will be faultless. He says there will always be mistranslations or errors.
Galician is deemed as an official language in the northwestern part of Galicia. To date, more than 2.4 million people speak this language. Additionally, Galician is closely related to Portuguese, explaining why Google misinterpreted grelo, which in Portuguese is actually deemed as an archaic slang term for clitoris.
Meanwhile, As Pontes currently hosts a population of 11,000.
The rapini festival kicks off on Feb. 15, 2016.
