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Chinese New Year: BBC subtitle blunder reads 'Welcome to the year of the whores'

BBC News' subtitle system got lost in translation, declaring this the year of the whores rather than year of the horse during its Chinese New Year coverage

Tomas Jivanda
Sunday 02 February 2014 11:21 GMT
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BBC News' subtitle system mistakingly referred to this as the 'year of the whores' during coverage of Chinese New Year
BBC News' subtitle system mistakingly referred to this as the 'year of the whores' during coverage of Chinese New Year (Twitter/@tirnaog09)

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Friday saw the start of the Chinese new year, with this being the year of the horse.

Unfortunately the BBC News subtitle system didn’t understand the memo quite right, and instead declared this the "year of the whores", much to the embarrassment of the channel.

“Welcome to the year of the whores. People around the globe celebrate,” read the subtitles.

Noticing the blunder, a number of eagle eyed viewers were able to quickly grab a screenshot and post it on Twitter.

@tirnaog09 wrote: “Happy Chinese New Year, according to BBC Subtitles it should be an interesting one! :-)”

@Bobie_Bobzy added: “Happy New year of the #whores from the #BBC. Bullé!”

This isn’t the first time the BBC’s subtitles have had somewhat of a malfunction, the Archbishop of Canterbury has been referred to as the “Arch bitch of Canterbury”, while during coverage of the Queen Mother’s funeral there was a call for “a moment’s violence”.


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