It is essential for a message to be translated into the target language as accurately as possible, as inaccuracies can lead to serious misunderstandings among the public. Fortunately, this recent lost-in-translation incident was not one of those cases.
Over the weekend, the Malaysia Mall Facebook page shared a photo of a notice from the KFC AEON Bukit Indah outlet. The memo was written in both Malay and English to inform customers about the broken ice machine. However, the English translation of the text was not entirely accurate.
As seen in the photo above, the Malay text indicated that the restaurant’s ice machine was experiencing technical issues. It can be assumed that the notice was directly translated into English, as it reads: “Dear Customers, today KFC AEON Bukit Indah does not have stone water because our stone water machine is having technical problems. Thank you.” This appears to be a case of using an online translation tool without proper proofreading, as the Malay term “air batu” was incorrectly translated to “stone water” instead of “ice.”
The post quickly went viral, with netizens mostly finding it humorous. In the comments section, some suggested that the Malay text shouldn’t have been translated at all, as everyone in Bukit Indah, Johor understands the language perfectly. Others speculated that this could be a case of using translation tools like Google Translate or not properly utilising the AI editing tool ChatGPT. A few argued that the English translation was not necessarily 100% incorrect, noting that “air batu” does directly translate to “stone water”.
There were also those who criticised the KFC outlet for not properly checking the notice before posting it, insinuating that whoever wrote and approved it lacked proficiency in the English language. It is currently unclear whether the notice is still being displayed at the restaurant, but perhaps this viral error could help the fast food chain attract more customers. Who knows?
Source: Facebook
