A customer in Toronto, Ontario was incensed to find that the color description on the new couch she had bought included a racial insult in its description of the sofa’s brown color. The store where she had purchased the furniture contacted its supplier, who blamed a faulty translation program for the offensive terminology, reports CNN.com. “We got the definition from a Chinese-English dictionary,” explained Huang Luovi from the Chinese software company Kingsoft Corporation in an interview with the Associated Press. “We’ve been using the dictionary for ten years. Maybe the dictionary was updated, but we probably didn’t follow suit.” Without going into the details of this regrettable incident, suffice to say that it is an example of how bad translation can go terribly wrong. An incorrect machine-generated translation may be inaccurate and even offensive. In the above case, the companies involved could face legal action from the justifiably angry customer. That’s why it’s important to turn to a qualified language service provider such as Language Translation Inc. in San Diego, California for your company’s translation needs. We specialize in translation, interpretation and localization and have over 17 years of experience in these fields. The vast majority of our translators are either totally bilingual, or translate into their native language, thus avoiding inaccuracies and rendering perfectly fluent and culturally correct translations. “We speak your language – and theirs.” Betty Carlson Subscribe to Language Lines, our monthly newsletter, for current information on translation and language interpretation. | 
