KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 4 — The “empty water” English translation from a Ministry of Health’s (MoH) Facebook posting which left many in stitches and went viral, was not done by the MoH.
In a statement to clarify the matter — which many mistook as being a language comprehension issue — the ministry said that the original posting on the public service message to educate people on the importance of drinking enough water, was in Bahasa Malaysia.
“The MoH found that the Facebook posting which was screenshot and widely spread via WhatsApp on January 3, 2022, is caused by users whose phones had the activated Facebook auto translate text feature.
“This situation caused the words ‘air kosong’ to be translated automatically to the words ‘empty water’ in the phones of the said users.
“Therefore, to avoid confusion, the cooperation of the public is requested to not fully depend on the auto translate function, since it does not provide an accurate explanation,” the MoH said.
