Europe



As Pontes, a town in Galicia in North-Western Spain, was shocked to see that their annual festival of rapini (a spinach-like vegetable) was advertised as celebrating something slightly more over-18s-only.

A galician festival got mistakenly translated as 'clitoris festival'

A galician festival got mistakenly translated as ‘clitoris festival’ Image by Contando Estrelas / CC BY 2.0

The discovery was made when  locals went online to find out the dates for the event and were surprised to see that As Pontes were no longer celebrating rapini, but the clitoris according to their website.

It appears that Google Translate was unable to find a translation from Galician to Castillian for the word rapini, and translated it into ‘clitoris’. Visitors to the website saw the Clitoris Festival or  Feria Clitoris advertised, much to the embarrassment of the local organisers who spotted the error on Thursday 29 October.

The blurb on the website read such unfortunate things as, “The clitoris is one of the typical products of Galician cuisine,” along with the still more surprising statement, “Since 1981, the festival has made the clitoris one of the star products of the local gastronomy.”

The post was taken off the website, and the organisers took it well, no doubt satisfied that at least they’d gotten their festival some publicity.