Himachal Govt Seeks Report From School Board After Bizarre Errors In Class 6 Textbook

Shimla: The Himachal Pradesh government has sought a report from the state's board of school education after bizarre and funny mistakes were found in an English edition Class 6 textbook.

Education Secretary Rakesh Kanwar told ETV Bharat that a detailed report regarding these errors has been sought from the Secretary of the Himachal Pradesh Board of School Education.

He also said that further action would be taken once the report is received. On the other hand, the Secretary of the Board of School Education has apprised the Education Secretary that the matter has been examined, and the process to rectify the errors has already been initiated.

In the Class 6 English edition textbook on 'Folk Culture and Yoga,' the district of Kinnaur has been erroneously printed as 'Transgender.' It is evident that in the era of AI and ChatGPT, an app was used which mistook 'Kinnaur' for 'Kinnar' (a term often associated with the transgender community) and translated it accordingly.

Similarly, the district of 'Mandi' was interpreted as 'market' and subsequently written as 'Market.' It was clear that the sentences were translated using an outdated AI tool and without any expert review. ETV Bharat had recently published a detailed report highlighting these errors.

Interestingly, despite containing such glaring errors, the book was not only printed but also released into the market without anyone noticing the mistakes. Commenting on the glaring errors in the book, linguist Navneet Sharma said, "Mislabelling the name of a tribal district as 'Transgender' is, of course, a typing error.

However, when you rely solely on technology—such as Google Translate or AI—for translation without engaging the human intellect, such 'ludicrous' and 'insulting' results inevitably emerge." "This constitutes an insult to everyone," he said.

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