Published : 06 Nov 2026, 05:21 PM
Updated : 06 Nov 2026, 05:22 PM
A Japanese minister has blamed Elon Musk’s social media platform X for translation errors that nearly caused diplomatic embarrassment, including one that made him appear unaware of who Bangladesh’s prime minister was.
Trade Minister Ryosei Akazawa raised the issue on Friday, after an automatic translation of his post about a meeting with visiting Bangladeshi Prime Minister Tarique Rahman incorrectly named ousted premier Sheikh Hasina, The Straits Times reports.
Akazawa said the mistake could leave Bangladeshis with the impression that Japan’s economy minister did not know who their prime minister was, describing it as “a serious matter”.
In his original Japanese-language post on Oct 28, accompanied by photographs, Akazawa had said he met Tarique.
But X’s machine translation reportedly changed the English version to suggest he had met Hasina, who has been living in exile in India since the 2024 mass uprising.
It was not the first such snafu, the Singaporean newspaper reported. A similar error followed his post about a Thursday online meeting with Kuwait’s oil minister Tareq Al-Roumi, with the translation saying he held talks with Qatar’s energy minister.
Akazawa added that his translated post on a meeting with US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had also carried an incorrect name.
“I experienced this three times,” he said, appealing to X to fix the translation tool.
