On Jan. 17, 2020, Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a two-day official visit to Naypyidaw, Myanmar.

It was the first visit made by a Chinese leader in almost two decades.

However, a distasteful error came to light on the second day of the visit, as Facebook's automatic translation feature mistranslated Xi's name on Myanmar's official Facebook page.

"Mr. Sh*thole"

A "technical error" mistranslated the Chinese president's name to "Mr. Sh*thole", which was littered across the Myanmar State Counsellor Office's Facebook page, as it recounted the Chinese leader's visit.

Umm. Facebook seems to be translating “Xi Jinping” written in Burmese as “Mr Shithole”.

This is a post on Aung San Suu Kyi’s official page, recounting her meeting with him yesterday... h/t @felizysolo

”kingdom of Mr Shithole” pic.twitter.com/B4V2cYjPJw

— Poppy McPherson (@poppymcp) January 18, 2020

"Mr Shithole, President of China arrives at 4PM," said a translated announcement posted on Saturday (Jan. 18, 2020).

"President of China, Mr. Shithole, signed a guest record of the house of representatives," it read.

This year also marks the 70th anniversary of formal diplomatic ties between the two countries.

Facebook apologised for "technical error"

According to Reuters, Facebook apologised for the technical gaffe, saying that the Facebook system did not have Xi's name in its Burmese database and guessed at the translation.

Translation tests of similar words that start with “xi” and “shi” in Burmese also produced “shithole”, Facebook added.

“We fixed a technical issue that caused incorrect translations from Burmese to English on Facebook.

This should not have happened and we are taking steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again. We sincerely apologize for the offense this has caused,” Facebook's statement wrote, Reuters reported.

While it was unclear how long the issue lasted, Google’s translation function did not show the same error.

Facebook has faced numerous problems with translation from Burmese in the past, and was temporarily removed in 2018.

An anti-Rohingya post advocating killing Muslims was translated into English as “I shouldn’t have a rainbow in Myanmar”, an investigation documented.

Top image via Myanmar State Counsellor Office/Facebook