It’s all Greek! Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah pulls up Meta for ‘misleading’ Kannada translations

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday flagged concern over what he called incorrect auto translation of Kannada content from his office on Meta Platforms, particularly Facebook and Instagram.

The “faulty auto-translation of Kannada content on Meta Platforms is distorting facts & misleading users. This is especially dangerous when it comes to official communications,” the CM wrote in a post on X.

Siddaramaiah said his media adviser, KV Prabhakar, has formally written to the social media giant seeking speedy action. “Social media platforms must act responsibly. I caution citizens to be aware that translations shown are often inaccurate. Such negligence by tech giants can harm public understanding & trust,” he said.


US-headquartered Meta also operates Threads, Messenger and WhatsApp, among other platforms.

Meta, in its response said, "We fixed an issue that briefly caused this inaccurate Kannada translation. We apologize that this happened."

In the email to Meta, the CM’s office said the translations from Kannada to English on Meta sites were frequently inaccurate and, in some cases, grossly misleading. “This poses a significant risk, especially when public communications, official statements or important messages from the chief minister and the Government of Karnataka are incorrectly translated,” Prabhakar’s mail read.

Many citizens, the CM’s office cautioned Meta, may not realise what they are reading is an automated translation and may end up misinterpreting the content.

The CM’s office urged Meta to temporarily suspend the auto-translation feature for Kannada content until the translation accuracy improves. It also suggested to the tech giant to collaborate with qualified Kannada and linguistic experts to enhance the quality of contextual accuracy of translations.

A couple of users on X welcomed the move from the CM’s office. A user suggested that the government put out its own translated version which would prevent any confusion.

Meta, in its response, added that machine translations are shown to users in various instances on Facebook and Instagram, including public biographical info and specific pieces of content. AI models, in this case our machine translation model provided a machine translation error which caused inaccurate Kannada translations in Facebook.

"We implemented a fix to ensure greater accuracy. We have provided machine translation on Facebook and Instagram for years and we are continuously gathering feedback in order to improve the technology and help the machine translation model learn to generate more accurate information."