A picture of a door hanger featuring non-elected Kaki Bukit branch chairman Shamsul Kamar made its rounds online earlier last weekend.

The brochure contained inaccurately translated Tamil language characters, which essentially turned the message in to gibberish.

Shamsul has since apologised for the error and oversight in printing the brochure.

Ho: could have been placement text

Ho Ching, wife of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, shared a Channel NewsAsia article on the matter, sharing her two cents about the incident.

Ho, who is Chief Executive of Temasek Holdings, said that the error could have been made due to placement or holder text that had not been removed before the brochure was finalised for printing.

She suggested indicating the relevant dummy texts with brackets, which will indicate whichever part of the message needed to be changed or finalised.

Issues with software

According to The Straits Times, however, this particular slip-up was due to a "software autochange issue", which caused the script to be jumbled up by the printing company.

This often happens when the other party, such as the printing company do not have the necessary or right Tamil script installed.

This was further exacerbated by the fact that the brochure was not checked by the Tamil speaker who wrote the message.

Netizen Khartini Khalid highlighted this issue in Ho's post, and mentioned the importance of having a Tamil speaker to check the accuracy of the script, from her own experience preparing brochures.

Ho chit-chatting with netizens

Ho, in response to a netizen's comment, mentioned the importance of having multiple people on hand to verify the accuracy of the languages written.

She highlights that as a multi-religious and multicultural society, we need to find ways to reduce slip-ups.