CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (WBBM NEWSRADIO) --The book store at the University of Illinois issued an apology to students after printing T-shirts that you could say were lost in translation.
The t-shirts were supposed to be translations of the phrase, “Hail to the Orange,” in multiple languages.
The employees at the book store used Google Translate and the result included “Bright the orange”, “Hail with a fruit”, and “Hailstones for oranges,” among others.
Students caught the mistakes.
“Yeah, it’s kind of disrespectful to see the language be translated in a weird way and people are making fun of it,” graduate student Xiaoye Zhang told CBS 3 in Champaign.
Some questioned why the bookstore didn’t reach out to the foreign languages department to get the translations right.
The bookstore issued the apology on social media, saying that the intent behind the t-shirts was not to offend or disrespect any culture, but to celebrate the university's diversity. The t-shirts have been removed from the store and from the bookstore's website, according to the statement.
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