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By Ryan Gandolfo
‘You are so Kris Wu.’
According to WeChat’s ‘unofficial’ translation, the aforementioned statement means ‘You’re real adorable.’
Image via @Rabbit每日爆料/Weibo
Some of China’s most popular celebrities went viral on WeChat’s messaging platform yesterday, March 3, after a glitch in their translation software misinterpreted certain English words when translating them into Chinese.
Netizens
on Weibo began posting screenshots of their WeChat messages, displaying
poorly phrased sentences like ‘You are so tfboys,’ along with a Chinese
translation meaning ‘You are really great’ (你們真是太好了). Other celebrities
like Cai Xukun, Lai MeiyunandCai
Weize, among others, received quirky new Chinese translations. Some
users even referred to these celebrities using just their initials and
yielded the same results.
Pop singer Lai Meiyun’s initials translated into ‘cute’ on WeChat. Photo via @火箭101少女_賴美雲 /Weibo
The glitch was a trending topic on Weibo, with around 270 million people
tuning in and 20 thousand users posting and commenting under a hashtag
roughly translated as #IsWeChatTranslateforReal?# (#微信翻譯是認真的嗎?#).
Around 270 million people have tuned into the trending topic as of press time. Screengrab via Weibo
On March 3, WeChat apologized
for the bug and said they are urgently working to fix the glitch. As
for the reason behind this comical mishap, WeChat has claimed their
translation software was not trained to recognize some unofficial
English words.
As of press time, it appears WeChat has removed the
translating functionality for any sentence containing the
aforementioned ‘unofficial words.’
While we reckon the TFBoys-glitch is a relatively harmless translation misstep, the same can’t be said for WeChat’s highly-publicized N-word translation blunder
a couple of years ago. Back in 2017, the Chinese social media platform
translated the words ‘black foreigner’ (‘黑老外’) as the deeply offensive
and always-not-okay N-word. WeChat issued an apology and fixed the
problem shortly after it was brought to their attention.
[Cover image: screengrab via WeChat]
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