Japanese Trade Minister Ryosei Akazawa has urged Elon Musk’s social media platform X to repair its automatic translation feature with citing recurring errors that risk causing diplomatic embarrassment.
The concern arose after an English auto-translation of Akazawa’s Japanese-language post regarding an Oct 28 meeting with visiting Bangladeshi Prime Minister Tarique Rahman incorrectly identified the leader as ousted former premier Sheikh Hasina.
Expressing deep concern on Friday, Akazawa noted that the error could give the false impression that Japan's trade chief was unaware of who holds Bangladesh's premiership.
"This is actually a serious matter" Akazawa told reporters also highlighting how inaccurate machine translation can misinform international audiences.
The minister disclosed that this was the third time he had faced translation inaccuracies on the platform. Previous errors included mistranslating a post about an online meeting with Kuwait’s oil minister to state he met Qatar’s energy minister as well as an incorrect name tag during a post about US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
Akazawa has formally appealed to X to address and rectify the platform's translation system.
