Meta killed me off! Siddaramaiah vs Facebook’s translation fail

Imagine logging onto Facebook and finding out you’re… dead? That’s what happened to Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah.

Transcript

00:00Imagine waking up, opening Facebook and finding out you are dead.

00:03Well, that's exactly what happened to Karnataka Chief Minister Siddharamaya.

00:06On July 15, he posted a tribute in Kannada for legendary actress B. Saroja Devi,

00:11who passed away at the age of 87 on July 14, 2025.

00:14But Mehta's English translation made it sound like it was Siddharamaya who had passed away.

00:18So, the Karnataka government shot off a formal letter to Mehta the next day.

00:21The tone was civil but clearly annoyed.

00:23They asked Mehta to immediately suspend Kannada to English auto-translation

00:26and demanded they bring in qualified language experts instead of relying on AI

00:30that apparently flunked Kannada 101.

00:32Mehta did apologize and said the bug has been fixed.

00:35But they have now disabled Kannada translations until they can get their act together.

00:39South Indian languages like Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam are regularly

00:43botched by major platforms like YouTube, X and sometimes even Google Translate.

00:47And these mistranslations can often lead to misinformation, outrage or worse communal tensions.

00:52As more regional voices go digital, big tech companies need to step up their language game.

00:56or risk being lost in translation quite literally.