Google Translate has a savage Easter egg calling out flat-Earthers
UPDATE: May 30, 2018, 9:34 a.m. BST Statement from Google.
The Earth is, of course, round. And, anyone who thinks otherwise is just plain wrong.
Google went one step further than that to call flat-Earthers out for their woefully misguided views. Google Translate cheekily called flat-Earthers "mad".
Go to Google Translate and type the words "I am a flat earther" in English, and select French as your translated language.
The words "Je suis un fou" appear as the translated text.
If you're a Francophone then you'll know that these words mean: "I am a crazy person."
By hitting the "swap languages" button, Google will then re-translate the phrase back into English. Rather than showing the original flat-Earther phrase, it reads "I'm a crazy person."
In a statement, a spokesperson for Google said the mistranslation was a result of an error, which it has since fixed.
Translate works by learning patterns from many millions of examples of translations seen out on the web. Unfortunately, some of those patterns can lead to incorrect translations. The error has been reported and we are working on a fix.
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Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
