A blogger named “Walking in the Rainforest” who recently posted the English version of a Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) poem by the famous poet Xin Qiji (1140-1207) as translated by Google’s automatic translation software has drawn laughter and some indignation because it translated the Chinese phrase bao ma (precious horses) as BMW, among other linguistic missteps.

The poem also features the popular line, “Zhongli Xunta Qianbaidu, Moran Huishou, Naren Quezai, Denghuo Lanshanchu” (In the crowd, a thousand times, I failed to see my love. Suddenly she turned her head and appeared in the corner where lights were sparse and somber) as “thousands of people in search of his degrees suddenly looking back, that person was her, and the lights and felt discouraged department.”

After reading the Google version some bloggers were not amused but said they instead felt “deeply hurt and insulted” by the auto-translation because it “spoiled traditional Chinese culture.”

In response to the indignation, Franz Och, director of Google’s machine translation department, said, “Using Google translation tools to translate Chinese poems is not recommended.”

Yangtze Evening Post