Chinese translation error created A&F n-word color pants
A Chinese company that makes knock of Aerocombie and Fitch clothing has caused a Twitter uproar...
A Chinese company that makes knock of Aerocombie and Fitch clothing has caused a Twitter uproar. After a translation error, the company posted ni**er color pants on their website and the real A&F company was blamed for it. The error came from a bad Chinese translation for the color dark brown. A similar incident occurred to the company Coach a few years ago. The Gawker reports:
Twitter is freaking out over brown cargo pants which appear to be sold by Abercrombie and Fitch and are described as ‘Ni**er Brown.’ It’s a hoax: the pants are listed on abercrombie-and-fitchoutlet.com, a bogus website registered in China that appears to sell knock-off A&F gear. But how did these pants end up being described so racist-ly in the first place?
Our best guess: The sites’ Chinese owners relied on a very bad Chinese-English translation program that’s done this before. Back in 2007, a black Toronto couple were shocked to find that their new couch had a tag underneath that described its color, like these pants, as “ni**er brown.” Subsequent investigation traced the error back to the couch’s Chinese manufacturer, who had used a translation program by Kingsoft which gave the slur as a translation for “dark brown.”
Click here to read more
