Hoffenheim Accidentally Translate Player Names to English

Earlier this week, Bundesliga club TSG Hoffenheim released a special Africa-themed jersey. Available in their online store since Monday, the 28th, the website had some issues for its English version.

Hoffenheim 21-22 Africa Kit Released

Mar 28, 2022

Hoffenheim's Embarrassing Mistake

Due to its ties to Uganda, it is no surprise that Hoffenheim's new special shirt is sought after by a more international audience than just German-speakers. So, like any other internationally visited site, Hoffenheim's online store can be browsed in English.

However, as spotted by Twitter user and avid kit collector @phildelves, Hoffenheim may have taken the translation of their German content a little too far. Along with all the descriptions, the menu with prints for player names was also put through a translation program.

This resulted in some funny alterations to Hoffenheim's player names which happen to have German meanings. These include:

Nordtveit - North Wide

Geiger - Violinists

Stiller - Silent

Raum - Room

Bischof - Bishop

We can confirm that the German club was at least not using Google Translate, since entering these names into the program yields different results. Nonetheless, it is apparant that Hoffenheim did not translate their site's information by hand, rather leaving it up to software, which failed to realize what not to translate.

Luckily, the menu for selecting player names is not directly connected to what will ultimately be printed on the jerseys. Selecting "Violinists" for example still created a "Geiger" print on the shirt.

We do not think many users were affected by this oversight, since Hoffenheim noticed it and fixed the problem yesterday.

What do you think of this strange and slightly embarrassing mistake? Have you seen names get translated elsewhere? Comment below.