There's a new catch-all excuse that's a kin to a "Get out of jail free" card in Monopoly. Blame it on the software. Go ahead, everybody's doing it, and it works.
When Toronto residents Doris and Douglas Moore got their new couch from Vanaik Furniture, they were offended by the label that described the colour as "nigger-brown". Vanaik Furniture blamed Cosmos Furniture in Scarborough who blamed the Chinese company that manufactured the couch. The Chinese company blamed it all on Kingsoft Corporation's translation software. Kingsoft says the Chinese-English dictionary they use with their software lists nigger as a synonym for dark brown.
So you see, nobody is actually at fault here. It's not Vanaik Furniture's fault for selling it to the Moore's this way, it's not Cosmos Furniture's fault for selling it through Vanaik Furniture, and it's not the Chinese manufacturer's fault for applying the offensive label. It's the software's fault, and that means nobody here is accountable.
They're all sorry, but being sorry and being accountable are two very different things. When in doubt, blame it on the software. It never fails.
