The limits of Google Translate, the Tunisian Minister for Culture pays the price

Google Translate is an online translation tool that is used very frequently. In Tunisia, the upper echelons of government, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage Preservation in this case, have used the tool.

To be efficient, and since it is an automatic, rough translation, the results from Google Translate should then undergo a “human proofreading.” The communications unit of the Tunisian Ministry for Culture probably skipped this step, to the extent that it let slip the translation of the Minister’s name, Latifa Lakhdhar. Yet this was a translation of an official media statement, released on September 18th. Therefore, the document mentions “Dr. Beautiful (for Latifa, which actually means “soft “) Green Minister (for Lakhdhar) for Culture and Heritage Preservation.”

This error is all the more glaring since Tunisia is a French-speaking country, and French is even taught starting in kindergarten in some schools. This translation error was not the only one committed by this particular ministry. In fact, Christiane Taubira’s name was also butchered on the Ministry’s Facebook page after being run through Google Translate. The French Minister for Justice, thus became Cristine Tébura, and this spelling was used both in the title and in the body text.