#163 Amazon’s Stumble in Sweden
A warning at the beginning: This post includes language that some may find offensive. And it might hold some surprises. The first surprise may be that Amazon only recently – during the second half of 2020 – opened a national site in Sweden. In fact, the first one in Europe’s Nordic countries. The second surprise is that a company as professional as Amazon – a company that has all the resources at its disposal that others can only wish for – makes mistakes when entering a new country that are embarrassing and could have easily been avoided. So, what happened? After having had country-specific sites in several European countries, Amazon had decided to get more serious about Sweden, Europe’s 10th largest economy by GDP. Entering the market required significant investments in local logistics infrastructure and, of course, the launch of a dedicated site, Amazon.se – Amazon’s 17th local portal worldwide. The new site allows Swedes to stop ordering from other European Amazon stores and order locally, instead. Naturally, new products had to be added, and translations into Swedish were necessary. Unfortunately, the launch didn’t go as smoothly as planned thanks to a number of glaring mistranslations. And this is where the “R” rated section of this post begins.
To cite a few examples, products that included rapeseed flower were translated into Swedish as “våldtäktsblomma”, using the Swedish word for rape (instead of “rapeseed”); the descriptions of greeting cards and t-shirts with the pictures of a rooster were translated into the Swedish “massiv kuk”, slang words referring to oversized male genitalia; an item branded as “Kitty Cat Hair Brush” became “Fittig katt vit hårborste” (“Vagina Cat”), and another item was listed as “child sex attack t-shirt”; a collection of World War II-era Russian infantry figurines was labeled “Russian Toddlers”, frying pans were referred to as items for women, and a silicone baking mold was described as “suitable for chocolate, feces, goose water, and bread”. In addition to these embarrassing translation mistakes, the site also offered a shower curtain with swastika symbols and – to top it all off – Amazon proudly displayed the Argentinian flag instead of Sweden’s on the country selector.
Amazon blames it all on on automatic translations powered by artificial intelligence. As at the British newspaper The Guardian reported, Amazon thanked its customers for pointing out the mistakes and explained that it was only “day one” for Amazon in Sweden. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is known not to be one who is very forgiving of mistakes and poor performance, so it’s certain that these errors will be fixed soon (and that someone’s head will roll). The memory of the botched start in Sweden will live forever, though.
November 4, 2020 @ 11:15 pm
Great post! It is humbling that a company as big, and as successful, as Amazon can make a mistake like this. It should be a cautionary tale for other companies who are looking to move into international markets they are unfamiliar with. I am not suspired that the AI had issues translating the names of all the products on the site correctly because that is a tough thing to ask of AI. However, a company like Amazon has the capital in place to hire a team that could double check the AI translations on the site before it’s launch. In my opinion they should have put together a Swedish team who could use AI to find all the inappropriate words on the site and evaluate whether they belong. Though this sounds like a lengthy process, Amazon has the capital for the AI and the capital to hire a large enough workforce who could tackle this problem in a short period of time.
January 12, 2021 @ 4:35 pm
Thanks for sharing Amazon’s “lost-in-translation” case in Sweden!
Most of the mistranslated words shown in the post account to 2 or more meanings in just one word, which is also called a homonym-word. I have personally experienced this kind of translation errors many times when working or travelling internationally. In my opinion, these lost-in-translation cases are not only common for Sweden, but also for the rest of the world. For me personally, it is a little bit entertaining that these kind of translation mistakes also happen to the online giant Amazon.
I would have bet that Amazon is having some of the best AI – algorithms when it comes to translation, because the company is already operating globally for a long time. Now I wonder if there are more mistakes like this and only Sweden noticed because of the offensive content.
In summary, the post points out that for global business processes it should not be solely relied on computer assisted translation, but also on experts.
January 17, 2021 @ 11:09 pm
There is no doubt in my mind that AI has benefits that have enriched the lives of customers and of businesses alike, however, this is a great example that demonstrates that AI is still a work in progress (at least, in the area of linguistics) and that companies should be cautionary on how and to what extent they should use AI – especially with regards to ‘delicate’ topics.
It also highlights that market entry is not only about high-level aspects such as benefits, costs, and management, but also about ‘simpler’ things like speaking the language of the customer (literally, in this case) and getting cultural differences right.
Of course, international expansions are highly complex and require a lot of preparation, however, managing to localize content and product descriptions is the least a big company like Amazon could do when entering a new market and reaching out to new customers – after all, they are certainly not short of money to hire some external translators and could thereby avoid selling “Russian toddlers” or “Vagina cats” on their marketplace.
January 24, 2021 @ 9:28 pm
Even though in Austria it is now almost declared a taboo to order from Amazon (“they do not pay ANY taxes in Austria”), I must openly admit that I still order there. Unfortunately, hardly any other online retailer can keep up with Amazon in terms of service, reliability and speed.
I also often smile about the really bad translations of many German product descriptions when shopping on amazon.at. The worse the translation (and be it only small spelling mistakes), the less I am willing to buy the described product. If it is high-priced, I resist buying it at all because in my perception the bad translation might go hand in hand with inferior quality or even with fake products. In this respect, I think it’s crucial that sellers who want to increase sales and raise brand reputation put a lot of effort in a high quality translation of their offered products in order to offer perfect service to their potential customers.
It will be exciting to see how successful Amazon will perform in Sweden – after all, the market entry there took place very late, only 20 years after Amazon has started in Germany for example. Furthermore, the e-commerce trade in Sweden has been digitally well positioned for years. Online shopping accounts for 15 percent of total trade in Sweden, including groceries (and these numbers are from pre-pandemic times). There are around 15,000 internet retailers in the country of only ten million inhabitants!
January 26, 2021 @ 8:36 pm
Interesting story of a yet extraordinary company. In my opinion, this example clearly shows that sheer size of a corporation can also be a burden when entering a new market. With 150 million products in 30 categories the choice to use artificial intelligence for translations is glaringly obvious. Especially considering Amazon’s involvement in these new computational areas. Nevertheless, a local team of native speakers could have anticipated the most critical errors and supported the translation with artificial intelligence.
In today’s globalized world, most of us are familiar with these types of spelling mishaps, in my experience particularly with Asian and Chinese vendors. But since technology advances in an everlasting increasing pace, I am confident that we will see these errors less and less in the future. Until then, (large) organizations are well advised to take advantage of a local team and linguistically skilled people to support a smooth foreign expansion without accidental worldwide amusement.