Microsoft slammed for translating 'Daesh' to 'Saudi Arabia'

Social media users in Saudi Arabia called for a boycott of Microsoft after their search engine Bing translated "Daesh", the Arabic name for the Islamic State group, into "Saudi Arabia". 

The hashtag '#Microsoft_Insults_Saudi' appeared on Twitter as users expressed their outrage at the mistranslation.

Mamdouh Najjar, a senior in Saudi's branch of Microsoft, apologised for the "unintentional error". He told Huffington Post Arabi that the error could be caused when large groups of more than 1,000 people submit translation suggestions, the machine automatically thinks that the suggestion is the preferred one. 

Translation: As an employee of this company [Microsoft], I personally apologise to the people of great Saudi Arabia, which is a country very close to our hearts, for the unintentional error

Saudi citizens called for a boycott

Translation: The Saudi people in one voice: Bing has been boycotted

Translation: This clip shows the translation on the Bing website, unfortunately this is an insult to us and we must boycott them

Translation: Is this a global company? We demand an apology

Najjar posted on Twitter to reassure complainants once the error had been fixed.

Translation: The fix has been implemented and this could have been caused by many reasons we are working on finding out