It's All in the Translation

Doris Moore is all upset about the name used to describe the color of her new Chinese made couch. She went public with it a couple days ago and has now gotten an explanation and an apology from the culprit.

Kingsoft Corp., a Chinese software company, acknowledged its translation program was at fault and said it was a regrettable error.

"I know this is a very bad word," Huang Luoyi, a product manager for the Beijing-based company's translation software, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

He explained that when the Chinese characters for "dark brown" are typed into an older version of its Chinese-English translation software, the offensive N-word description comes up.

"We got the definition from a Chinese-English dictionary. We've been using the dictionary for 10 years. Maybe the dictionary was updated, but we probably didn't follow suit," he said.

That just wont do...

Moore is consulting with a lawyer and wants compensation. Last week, she filed a report with the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

It gets worse...

"Something more has to be done. We don't just need a personal apology, but someone needs to own up to where these labels were made, and someone needs to apologize to all people of color," Moore said. "I had friends over from St. Lucia yesterday and they wouldn't sit on the couch."

In my opinion, Doris Moore is abusing the system and making a mountain out of a mole hill. Translation... She won't be happy till she sees some cash in the palm of her hand. I am fairly certain, unfortunately, that the Ontario Human Rights Commission has far better things to do than this.