Japan: Translation farce causes Osaka metro to pull down websites

Lost in Translation: Osaka Subway is one of the busiest metro system in Japan. Photo / Getty images

Osaka's metro system has shut down its foreign language website to save face, after the internet trolls the Japanese transport network.

"Sakai Muscle" and "Three Eyes" sound more like bizarre medical conditions rather than stops on a rail network. However, users of the metro system in the Japanese city of Osaka have been noticing some very odd translations.

As part of the drive for improved accessibility ahead of this year's Rugby World Cup and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, many businesses have been trying to make themselves ready for foreign visitors. This has required a enormous amount of speedy and - not always accurate - translation.

With such a huge volume of translations and tiny linguistic nuances the project was likely to derail at some point.

Among the odd Angilcisations were the following head scratchers: Sakaisuji line was mistranslated "Sakai Muscle"; Dobutsuen-mae became "Before the Zoo" and more confusing still, Taishibashi-Imaichi became "Prince Bridge Now City".

Other garbled signs replaced the word third carriage with "three eyes".

However, according to the BBC, officials are blaming the Microsoft translation software they used to quickly produce English language pages.

大阪メトロのその他の誤訳

…ワールドティーハウスww
超オシャレタウンww #大阪メトロ #Osakametro pic.twitter.com/shwp7PpJmR

— meme (@meme_k_z_) March 19, 2019

However the translations have become a source of humour rather than confusion.

Commuters noticing the odd names have been sharing the bizarre signage to twitter sending the Japanese hashtags for "Muscle Line" and "Osaka Metro" online. The regional transport network has become a lead topic of conversation the for the country of 120 million people.

The woeful translations have caused metro system to pull down its English, Chinese, Korean and Thai language websites out of embarrassment.

While it is not clear when the sites would resurface for non-Japanese speakers, the URLs now all redirect to the main Japanese site.

Microsoft told the BBC that it would "take appropriate steps to support our customer" as they try to clean up the baffling translations.

英文もファッキンクールで草。
中文警察以前の問題やん…。
メトロのHP、🇹🇭タイ語と🇰🇷韓国語版もあるけどまさか…！？#大阪メトロ#OsakaMetro pic.twitter.com/oGbm6Yu786

— ㄐㄧㄢ ㄉㄨ (ㄐ ㄩˇㄍㄨㄤㄏㄠˋ)🇯🇵 (@tielumi_jp) March 15, 2019

Apart from the signage, there are other things Western tourists might find unusual about the Japanese subway system.

'Women Only' carriages in a Osaka Municipal Subway. Photo / Zhang Peng, Getty Images

While its translation project may have backfired, the forward-thinking railway service is famous for introducing 'Women Only' carriages in 2002. The segregated carriages were introduced in reaction to high incidents of groping, occurring when the busy subways were at points running at over 160 per cent capacity according to specialist travel company Japan Experience.

Japanese and English languages are notoriously difficult to translate between.

Some mistranslations are harder to bury. At the beginning of the year singer Ariana Grande was horrified to learn a Japanese tattoo on her wrist she intended to read "seven rings" had missed the mark. On a picture shared online, fans informed the horrified star it actually read "barbecue grill".