YouTube apologises for Polish PM translation error

Online video sharing service YouTube has apologised for a translation error that misrepresented Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki by suggesting that Nazi German death camps "were Polish", the media reported.

Polish Press Agency reported on Saturday that YouTube apologised for the error caused by "automatic translation", according to Xinhua.

Morawiecki made a public TV address on Thursday about a controversial anti-defamation bill, outlawing historically inaccurate use of the term "Polish death camps" among other provisions.

As part of his speech, Morawiecki declared: "The camps in which millions of Jews were murdered were not Polish. That truth must be protected because it is part of the truth of the Holocaust." However, YouTube's automatic translation software rendered the sentence as: "Camps where millions of Jews were murdered were Polish."

"The mistake was caused by automatic translation on YouTube, for which we apologise," Adam Malczak, the service's press representative, wrote in a mail in reply to a question by Bloomberg News.

Overnight between Wednesday and Thursday, Polish senators voted 57 to 23 in favour of the controversial anti-defamation bill. The legislation is now pending the final approval of the president.

The bill proposes to jail or fine a person who blames Poland or the Poles for Nazi crimes against humanity which were committed in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II. The bill also prohibits phrases such as "Polish death camps."

About six million Jews were killed by the Nazis in World War II, and many of them in the death camp of Auschwitz and other death camps in Poland.

The new legislation has already sparked an uproar in Israel.

--IANS

pgh/