In a subtitling error, BBC News marked the beginning of the Chinese New Year on Friday as "the year of the whores" instead of horse, which is considered an auspicious time for business.
The mistake was spotted around 7 p.m. local time on Friday when Rajesh Mirchandani, who was presenting the bulletin, declared: “Welcome to the year of the whores. People around the globe celebrate.”
The gaffe was immediately acknowledged and corrected, Mail Online reported BBC as stating. But it has created a frenzy on Twitter, with a number of people mocking the news channel.
“Happy Chinese New Year, according to BBC Subtitles it should be an interesting one!” noted one, while another added, “So it’s Chinese New Year, but the BBC subtitles got a bit confused about the year.”
As a number of Twitter users noted, this is not the first time BBC, said to be the only news channel that subtitles all its programs, has made prominient mistakes.
Previous errors included calling Ed Miliband as "Ed Miller Band," and referring to the Church of England leader as the "arch bitch of Canterbury."
During the Queen Mother’s funeral in 2002, call for a moment of silence was subtitled as “we will now have a moment’s violence.”
Acknowledging that the news channel has become the butt of jokes owing to its many mistakes, a BBC spokesman said in 2011 that the channel is striving to improve accuracy.
“We recognise that subtitling it a hugely important service, and we endeavour to ensure it is as accurate as possible,” Mail Online quoted the spokesperson as saying.
“There are occasions, particularly during live broadcasts, when mistakes will happen but we do all we can to keep this to a minimum and are constantly striving to improve accuracy."
