BBC Weather Forecast Tells Viewers to Expect ‘Nazi Ghosts’

Image by Getty
A BBC weather forecast in Wales recently told viewers that they could expect to encounter some “Nazi ghosts” along with a cold front in the days ahead.
The subtitling of the forecast delivered by the BBC Wales presenter Sue Charles was supposed to read the “North Sea coast.” But a glitch in the automatic subtitling mis-transcribed the phrase as “Nazi ghosts.”
Viewers picked up on the snafu quickly. “For a moment you might have thought the Nazis had come back from beyond the grave to invade the country from the North Sea,” one quipped, according to the Daily Mail.
The forecast was filmed in Llandaff, Cardiff. A BBC employee told the Daily Mail that it was a problem of automation and not a human error. “Our auto subtitling automatically transcribes the words it hears.”
Every once in a while, the employee said, “there will be the odd blooper and this was one of them.”
This wasn’t the first time the station encountered some technical difficulties.
In 2002, one broadcaster asked for a “moment of violence” during the Queen mother’s funeral.
Email Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
