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The Defense Ministry for Malaysia recently found out the hard way that Google (News - Alert) Translate, a free chat translation platform, is probably not the most reliable tool.

What happened was when the Malaysian government leveraged this solution to translate the Malay language to English, it stirred up online mockery on social networking websites Facebook and Twitter (News - Alert).  This was because the inaccurate translation caused the the ministry’s dress code portion that should have stated that women should wear “appropriate clothing and worn neatly and politely in line with the practice of noble character,” as reported by News 24 to instead say “clothes that poke eyes” – as if to reference revealing attire.

According to an article by The Star, Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said yesterday the chat translation’s inaccuracy had caused much embarrassment to the ministry.

“We have corrected the mistakes and translations are no longer done that way. It is now done manually,” Hamidi said in a statement.

An additional section that received ridicule from Malaysia’s citizens is the website’s reference to the aftermath of the 1957 independence from Britain which said, “After the withdrawal of British army, the Malaysia Government take drastic measures to increase the level of any national security threat.”

Several hours after the chat translation fail crept its way all over the social networking sites, the ministry took the English translated version down.

Unfortunately for Malaysia this isn’t the first time they have experienced issues with the chat translation tool. In fact, on April 28 a banner during the welcoming ceremony for Chinese Premier Wen Jiaobao was held up with a message in Malay and then translated to Chinese. The banner read: “An official welcome ceremony for Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to Malaysia.”

However, once again the Malaysian government used Google’s chat translation tool to write the message in Chinese as well, which read: “The official welcome ceremony, with him together His Excellency Wen Jiabao’s official visit to Malaysia.”

Although Malaysia has been the recent target for the chat translation failure, others have noted Google Translate’s flaws in the past. According to a report by TMCnet, IceWarp (News - Alert), a provider of messaging and collaboration solutions including chat translation, accused Google Translate of not being fully protected. IceWarp stated that because of Google’s use of JavaScript, the code is visible to everybody making it easier for hackers.

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