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They talk about a "linguistic translation" error in the attempt to deflect focus away from the meta data triggers that this person generated.
Cyber phrenology is real.
Note that in Arabic there are no vowels. Also note that it's not the common "good morning" (Sabah Al-khair), but a rarer term: one word, 6 letters, no vowels. The equivalent in english would be "gdmrng".
It is a shortened form though, and is equivalent to "Morning!"
This is scary and 1984 ish. A man was arrested because of a bad translation.
> a fly gets jammed in a printer and results in the incarceration and accidental death during interrogation of cobbler Archibald Buttle – instead of renegade air conditioning specialist and suspected terrorist Archibald Tuttle
The operative quote from the article is: "no Arabic-speaking officer had read the man’s Facebook post." This reminds me of the kind of alarmist, ham fisted policing we often see in America, where police will barge into an elderly person's home and trash the place because they forgot to double check the address.
It's like a Miami policemen without any Spanish/Portuguese knowledge.
Given how ridiculously common the phrase "Good morning" is in Arabic, (I mean, look at any Arabic 101 textbook, the Sabah Al-khair / Sabah al-noor exchange is one of the first things they teach you), it's puzzling why Facebook's translation algorithm didn't see that as a fixed phrase, rather than trying to translate it word by word. So much for machine learning.
Note that in Arabic there are no vowels. Also note that it's not the common "good morning" (Sabah Al-khair), but a rarer term: one word, 6 letters, no vowels. The equivalent in english would be "gdmrng".
No, seeing as there are no vowels in Arabic, the equivalent is not an English word with vowels, with the vowels removed. It is a shortened form though, and is equivalent to "Morning!"
Maybe the translation algorithm confused "Yisbah-hum" (good morning) with "Yitbah-hum" (Kill them)?
The operative quote from the article is: "no Arabic-speaking officer had read the man’s Facebook post." This reminds me of the kind of alarmist, ham fisted policing we often see in America, where police will barge into an elderly person's home and trash the place because they forgot to double check the address.
I would consider obvious it'd be enormously advantageous for Israeli police to have, at least, a basic understanding of Arabic. It's like a Miami policemen without any Spanish/Portuguese knowledge.
And in this case, considering what someone with evil intent and a bulldozer can do, I can understand arrest first, figure out what's going on second.
It's not like arresting someone after the fact - in that situation you can take some time. Here it's before the fact, and seconds count.
This headline got a chuckle out of me, not gonna lie.
The operative quote from the article is: "no Arabic-speaking officer had read the man’s Facebook post." This reminds me of the kind of alarmist, ham fisted policing we often see in America, where police will barge into an elderly person's home and trash the place because they forgot to double check the address.
I would consider obvious it'd be enormously advantageous for Israeli police to have, at least, a basic understanding of Arabic. It's like a Miami policemen without any Spanish/Portuguese knowledge.