Bengaluru: It is always a moment of pride and joy to see an internet giant respect and honour your language. Google recently released an updated versions of Google Maps in which you can view your local maps in Kannada.
Unfortunately, it looks like Google relied a little too much on its TranslatIon app to arrive at the proper names of the places; ‘proper’ being a debatable term.
While many saw familiar names pop up in Kannada with smiles on their faces, some smiles turned into bouts of laughter with some very like LOL’s and some possible ROFL’s.
To explain: the word ‘Paalya’ in Kannada means ‘place’, ‘Palya’ on the other hand means ‘side dish’. For example, Anepalya (pronounced as Aane Paalya), would literally mean ‘elephant side dish’, if the current Kannada version of the map is to be believed.
There are many areas in Bangalore where the name ends in ‘paalya’ so, you can imagine what the map would sound like to anyone who can read and understand Kannada.
We just hope that Google is notified of this humourous error so that they can get to fixing it ASAP. Let’s all have a good laugh till then.