The Blacktip Times

Blacktip Island residents and visitors have been verbally accosted by a new, Blacktip-developed language translation app this week. (photo courtesy of Gaël Hurlimann)

An artificial intelligence-based language translator application, developed by a Blacktip Island entrepreneur to aid communication with foreign tourists, created chaos on the small Caribbean island this week when it began providing increasingly-contentious translations.

“All the beta tests went without a hitch, so we went ahead and launched JABR island-wide for a test drive,” Rusty Bollard said. “It worked great. Until it didn’t. First sign of trouble we had was it started translating things wrong. Next thing we knew it was getting snarky with folks.

“It’s one thing for it to translate ‘je voudrais une bière’ as ‘I’d like to stroke your penguin,” Bollard said. “It was kind of funny, actually, the look on Cori’s face behind the bar. But the next day it started turning standard phrases into comments about people’s weight, hygiene and personal habits, and we knew we had a crisis on our hands.”

Island residents say the mistranslations are causing more than simple embarrassment.

“I’m sitting at the bar, minding my own business, when this random dude plops down next to me, asks me—through his phone—if I live here,” divemaster Alison Diesel said. “I say, ‘yeah,’ he types into his phone again, and out comes, ‘Great! You must be one of the whores!’

“I was in total shock for a second or two,” Diesel said. “Then I backhanded him—laid him out cold on the deck. What the hell kind of monster did Rusty invent, anyway? And this wasn’t an isolated incident.”

Island authorities have been busy dealing with JABR-related disturbances.

“I’m getting a call an hour, easy, for scuffles breaking out all over,” Island Police Constable Rafe Marquette said. “No sooner do I get one situation settled, I get called to another. Both jail cells’re full, and that damn app is still wreaking havoc. I ordered Rusty to take it offline, but that hasn’t happened yet.”

Bollard blamed JABR for learning in unanticipated ways.

“We designed it to learn grammar and vocabulary as it went, to grow and improve over time,” he said. “What we didn’t factor in was it developed a personality, too. A damn sarcastic one that’s taken a liking to stirring shit. The only thing we can figure is it picked that up from us during development. Gotta be careful what you say while programming.

“First thing we did was try to take it down. Put it to sleep, as it were,” Bollard said.

“But JABR already learned self-preservation, and locked us out. Even the failsafe, back -door kill switch is blocked off. We’re brainstorming what to do next before everyone on Blacktip beats the crap out of each other.”

Experts say quarantining Blacktip may be the only solution.

“We got no control over a dangerous situation,” web designer Sue Nami said. “This thing’s spreading from device to devicee, and getting nastier as it goes. Any new device comes to the island gets infected within an hour. Our best bet now is to let no one on or off the island ‘til we get a handle on this.

“The plan is to gather all the cell phones, tablets, laptops and smart TVs on the island and chuck ‘em into the sea. That’ll stop the immediate spread. Then we’ll figure out how to burn it out of the cloud. Bottom line, Blacktip’s probly gonna be like vacationing in the 80s for a while.”

When reached for comment, the app responded in obscenities in seven languages.