Google has apologised after a translation tool suggested a number of offensive translations for the word “gay”.

The company has a new Google Service which allows a number of translation options. However, a number of people noticed that the word ‘gay’ was translated into homophobic slurs such as “faggot” and “fairy”.

http://imgur.com/7V5LOOY,4c8GQY6

AllOut created a petition to send to Google to eliminate these words from the translation.

“Imagine learning English and being taught to say hateful insults instead of neutral language for “gay”? Google Translate – used by over 500 million people every month – was suggesting slurs as synonyms for the word “gay”,” the AllOut team said in a statement. “Thousands of us signed the urgent petition and Google heard us. This is how powerful we are when we stand together.”

A Google spokesperson said:

“As soon as we were informed that some of our translations for certain terms were serving inappropriate results, we immediately began working to fix the issue. […] Our systems produce translations automatically based on existing translations on the web, so we appreciate when users point out issues such as this.”

The translation amendments are still being completed.