(MENAFN- Morocco World News) A translation glitch has angered Saudi Arabia officials and has led to a call to boycott of Microsoft and its Bing search engine.
When typing the word Daesh, the acronym in Arabic for the Islamic State, the Bing translation program erroneously provided 'Saudi Arabia.' '#Microsoft_Insults_Saudi' has become the hashtag by which social media users have voiced their outrage over the mistranslation. Microsoft communicated a formal apology to the Saudi government for the translation error, saying the error was 'unintentional.' 'Our product team fixed the error in the automated translation witihin hours of learning about it, a Microsoft spokesperson told Sputnik. #??????????_????_????????
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Bing has only two percent of the search engine market in Saudi Arabia in 2014, according to StatsMonkey.com. Whereas, Google search accounts for 94.16 percent of search engine usage.
Bing's translation error may have infuriated Saudi official more because of recent evidence and allegations that the kingdom has funded terrorist operations.
'Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to terrorist groups worldwide, according to documents leaked by Wikileaks.
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— ?. ????? ???? (@Mamdouhnajjar) August 26, 2016
Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support based for Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT (Lashkar-e-Taliba), and other terrorist groups, including Hamas, which probably raise millions of dollars annually from Saudi sources, often during Hajj and Ramadan,' the leak continued. A leaked 2009 email, written by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is now the US Democratic Party's nominee for president says: 'it has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority.' data-ad-client="ca-pub-9546318280945074" data-ad-slot="9241175969"> jQuery.ajax({ url: "http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/", data: { top_ten_id: 195503, top_ten_blog_id: 1, activate_counter: 11, top10_rnd: (new Date()).getTime() + "-" + Math.floor(Math.random() * 100000) } });