News Obiaks News

Facebook has issued a strong apology after a man was arrested in Israel following a post he made on the social media platform that was translated to mean "attack them".

According to Israeli news agencies, The man, a construction worker in the West Bank settlement of Beitar Illit, near Jerusalem, posted a picture of himself leaning against a bulldozer with the caption "yusbihuhum", which translates as "good morning".

Facebook said it is looking into the issue, and in a statement to Gizmodo, added: "Unfortunately, our translation systems made an error last week that misinterpreted what this individual posted.

"Even though our translations are getting better each day, mistakes like these might happen from time to time and we've taken steps to address this particular issue. We apologise to him and his family for the mistake and the disruption this caused."

Arabic is widely considered as one of the most difficult languages to interpret as there are many dialects related to the standard arabic language. This makes it extremely difficult for machine translators to accurately interpret.