The western African country of Liberia was founded by former slaves from America beginning in 1820, when the United States started sending them home.
Then US President James Monroe funded the creation of the colony to the tune of $100,000 so they named the capital, Monrovia, after him and adopted a flag similar to the Star-Spangled Banner. In 1847, Liberia declared itself an independent country.
Last 9 July, Liberian President Joseph Boakai visited the US and met with his counterpart, Donald Trump, in the White House. The highlight of the encounter was Trump’s comment on Boakai’s language skills after the latter thanked him for the face-to-face meeting.
“Such good English… where did you learn to speak so beautifully?” Trump asked Boakai.
Social media reaction to Trump’s compliment was mixed, some saying that he was ignorant of the fact that English is the official language of Liberia. Boakai’s spokesperson assured reporters in Monrovia that their President was not offended by the US leader.
Meanwhile, the chief minister of the southwestern Indian state of Karnataka, Siddaramaiah, was not impressed with the English translation of his message of condolences to an Indian actress.
Siddaramaiah posted on Instagram and Facebook on 15 July in the Kannada language of Karnataka that he was paying his respects to the late B. Saroja Devi.
CNN reports that the auto-translation version of the message by the two social media platforms read, “Chief Minister Siddaramaiah passed away yesterday multilingual star, senior actress B. Took darshan of Sarojadevi’s earthly body and paid his last respects.”
The erroneous, garbled translation suggested that Siddaramaiah, who uses only one name, was the one who “passed away,” according to CNN.
The politician sent Meta a letter criticizing the faulty translation, asking that it be suspended until the program is fixed to accurately translate Kannada to English. He suggested that Meta work with Kannada language experts to improve the translation tool.
Meta issued an apology and declared the issue fixed with the following revised auto-translation of Siddaramaiah’s message:
“The multilingual star, senior actress B Sarojadevi who passed away yesterday, paid his last respects,” according to CNN.
The new translation still appeared to be inaccurate though.