Racist sofa tag traced to faulty Chinese translation software

[atlasien]

A fascinating story. I was waiting to see what the origin of the tag would turn out to be. There is an interesting bit of racist English fashion history in the article link.


http://www.snopes.com/racial/business/sofa.asp

It's also depressing that no one else stepped up when they noticed the tag. I mean, there had to be more than one person that bought that same sofa in the same color. But I bet no one raised a fuss until a black family bought the sofa.

[silkie]

Yeah, I spotted this story a while back.

Interesting I haven't thought about your question of why it took so long to catch that mistake, but it makes sense.

On another note, while I agree that it is not cool to have a tag like that and I support the buyer's outrage, I can also can totally see someone in the Chinese manufacturing company just taking the a dictionary and did not check the historical significance of the word "Nigger."

I was recently in China sourcing some building materials, and they make some impecable knockoffs of high end fixtures for a fraction of the price. A lot of them sport the similar names as the original, but with a slight nonsensical twist like "Bravat" instead of "Duravit." They even used the same fonts in their logos. I guess someone spots the color description "Negro" in Italian products and tried to do the same word twist.

Anyhow, I am not making excuses for them. Some of these companies should do some more research if they have already went through so much effort producing their products.

[Hater Depot]

I've often wanted to say to Korean companies that if the country is going to keep importing so many English teachers they might as well put them to some proofreading work. Schools usually don't even ask their own whiteys to proofread banners and ads, which they'd have to do free. Mindboggling.