Associated Incidents
Following a goof up by Facebook, a Palestinian man was arrested by the Israeli police for posting ‘Good Morning’ on the social media site.
According to reports, the man, a construction worker said “Good Morning” in Arabic in Facebook post, but the post was mistranslated to read “attack them” in Hebrew.
Following the mistranslation, the police said that they held the man under suspicion of incitement briefly, but that the man was released as soon as the mistake was realised.
The Palestinian construction worker was identified as Halawim Halawi and he is said to have posted a photo showing himself standing next to a bulldozer at the Israeli settlement of Beitar Ilit, where he works, in the occupied West Bank.
Previously, local reports noted, such vehicles have been used in terror attacks and officers thought he may be threatening to carry out such an atrocity.
Reports also pointed out that there is only one difference in lettering between the colloquial Arabic phrase for “good morning to you all” and “hurt them.”
Further, officers wholly dependent on Facebook’s automatic translation and did not consult an Arabic-speaking officer before making the arrest.
Law enforcement problems due to automated translation have affected tech companies and their popularity in the past.
Last year, Google’s online translation tool rendered the Russian Federation as ‘Mordor.’
Morder is the name of a fictional dark and evil region in JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books.
Further, “Russians” was translated to “occupiers” – causing more shame for the company.
At the time, Google argued that Translate worked by looking for patterns in hundreds of millions of documents – but translation remained difficult as the meaning of words was tied to the context in which they were used.