Bing under fire after it translates ‘Daesh’ as ‘Saudi Arabia’

Saudi Arabia’s monarchy was left fuming after Microsoft’s Bing search engine translated ‘Daesh’ – the Arabic acronym for Islamic State – as ‘Saudi Arabia.’ Many have called for a boycott of the search engine.

While no one fully expects online translation tools to be perfect, it is at least expected that they won’t falsely identify countries as being synonymous with terrorist groups that com- mit gruesome atrocities.

However, that’s exactly what Bing did over the week- end, in an incident that has in- furiated Riyadh. Representatives of Saudi Ara- bia’s monarchy called for a boycott of the search engine, along with many citizens.

Some took to social media to express their outrage.

“The Saudi people in one voice: Bing has been boycotted,” said one tweet.

Another Twitter user posted a clip of the translation on Bing’s website, calling it an “insult” and urging a boycott of the search engine.