The Denver Post had a spellchecker run amok on a recent story, causing three men to have their last names changed into common words. The paper then ran this editorial to warn the world:
Trust spellcheck, but verify
Electronic spellcheck programs highlight words they don’t recognize, including proper names, and recommend alternate spellings. But editor beware, the buttons "ignore" and "replace" are too close for comfort.
On Wednesday, we ran an editorial on federal corruption that misspelled three names. Michael Scanlon became "Michael Scanning," Jack Abramoff became "Jack Brimful" and Bob Ney became "Bob Hey."
One sympathetic journalism expert said yesterday that spellcheck can be an editor’s enemy, "as Voldemort is to Harry Potter."
Or as our spellchecker would have it, "as Voltmeter is to Harry Potter."
A lesson learned. Link
Let’s hope they also learned their lesson when it comes to translation.
