Shimla: After “Kinnaur” was wrongly translated as “transgender” in a Class 6 textbook, the Himachal Pradesh Board of School Education on Sunday said it would issue a corrigendum to correct the error.In the English version of Folk Culture of Himachal and Yoga, district Kinnaur was incorrectly translated, while the Hindi version carried the correct name.Board officials said the error likely occurred during translation from Hindi to English, possibly using an AI tool that mistook “Kinnaur” for “Kinner” and translated it as “transgender”. However, board secretary Vishal Sharma said it was not yet clear how the mistake occurred.“We had given the translation work to a subject expert. We don’t know whether AI was used or if the error was manual,” Sharma said.He said a corrigendum would be issued shortly, clarifying that “transgender” should be read as “Kinnaur”, and the correction would be made in the next print. “We publish over one crore books annually. It is difficult to recall such a large volume,” he said.The board has blacklisted the expert involved and engaged another to review textbooks for similar errors.The issue also revives past sensitivities around the term “Kinner”. In 2007, the use of the word in the film Traffic Signal had sparked protests in Kinnaur, with the then chief minister Virbhadra Singh condemning it and the film being banned in the state.
