Senkaku Islands Referred to as Diaoyu Islands in Subtitles of NHK Report; Japanese Broadcaster Says AI System Responsible

The Yomiuri Shimbun

15:47 JST, February 13, 2025

An English language news report referencing the Senkaku Islands were referred to as the Diaoyu Islands in Chinese subtitles, NHK announced on Wednesday.

The report, which was related to the Japan-U.S. summit talks, used the Chinese name for the Okinawa Prefecture islets on Monday. According to NHK, when the broadcast reported on China’s reaction, an employee noticed that some of the Chinese subtitles showed “Diaoyu Islands in Okinawa Prefecture” and “Japan controls the Diaoyu Islands.”

According to the broadcaster, the error was caused by an instant automatic translation system that uses Google’s artificial intelligence. The public broadcaster terminated its multilingual subtitling service in nine languages, including Chinese, on Monday.

The multilingual subtitling service was introduced in 2020 for live international broadcasts. The service has increased the number of languages it provides and now shows subtitles in Portuguese and Ukrainian, among others.

“As the issue of unstable translations has become apparent, we have decided that it is not an appropriate service for NHK,” NHK President Nobuo Inaba said at a regular press conference on Wednesday. “We must urgently develop NHK’s own AI translation system.”