The instructions on the back of a packet of oatmeal have baffled the internet after a picture gained viral attention on Reddit.
Shared on the discussion site's popular forum r/mildlyinteresting, the post by Justin (IGotTheDud on Reddit) from Toronto, Canada included a picture of the package instructions with the caption: "The instructions on my oatmeal say to cook it longer in the French translation."
The post now has over 34,000 upvotes and thousands of comments.
Detailing both the English "instructions" and French "préparation" information, the image shows the English instructions, which read: "Bring water and salt to a boil. Add oats. Stir and reduce heat to low. Cover and cook 2-3 minutes, until the oats are tender." But the French instructions translate the same way but instead instruct a cooking time of 5-8 minutes.
Justin told Newsweek: "After several cooking trials with some expert taste testers (my fiancée), the oats definitely turn out the tastiest if you follow the French instructions."
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 21.6 percent of people in the U.S. speak a language other than English at home. That's 1 in every 5 adults.
Meanwhile, a 2019 Statista survey found that over 1 million Americans speak French, including Cajun, making it the 6th highest spoken language in the U.S. after English.
Justin said that the oats in the image are One Degree Organic Foods quick oats—a brand that can be found in the U.S. and Canada.
Confused by the disparity between the two sets of instructions, commenters on the Reddit post shared their thoughts. One user wrote: "The French like their oatmeal well done." Another said: "The French don't like rustic oatmeal I guess."
Joking about the reasons for the difference, commenters came up with their own answers. One user wrote: "Those are metric minutes." And another said: "An extra five minutes to smoke a cigarette beforehand?"
More seriously, other users pointed out that it was likely a misprint issue or a mix-up at the production level. One Redditor suggested: "Pretty sure it's just a labeling issue. 2-3 minutes is for quick rolled oats. 6-8 minutes for regular rolled oats. Somebody forgot to change one of the printing plates when the line switched. That or possibly oatmeal is in fact the missing bit in our quest of the mastery of time."
Later in the comments, a user named Albert_Herring shared an insightful potential reason for the mix-up, writing: "A lot of this stuff is going to be hacked out by computer-aided translation software that reuses previously translated sentences"
The Reddit user Albert_Herring's real name is Roger Hughes. Living in England, he has been in the translation business for almost 30 years. He told Newsweek: "These days translations will be handled using as many software aids as possible, but it can't be reliably done completely by computers—ultimately, you always need someone to do some error-checking and here they clearly took their eye off the ball.
"It's easy to just look at the target text and let it through because it reads OK, without double checking against the source, especially on a Friday afternoon when you've had several thousand words of almost identical and stupendously boring text to read over."
As the world becomes increasingly connected, requirements for global language services like translation are growing. The market size of the the global language services market in 2020 was forecast at between 47.5 and 48.4 billion U.S. dollars—estimated to keep growing throughout 2022.
Thankful for the Redditor shedding light on the potential reason for the confusion, one commenter wrote: "Oh sh*t, a real answer." Another added: "Thank you for being the only non-moron in this whole thread."
One Degree Organic Foods told Newsweek: "Unfortunately we can't attribute this error to a conversion to metric minutes—it is indeed a mistake on our packaging and the French instructions were for our Rolled Oats product, not our Quick Oats, which is what Justin had purchased. We recently discovered and corrected the error so while there may still be a few incorrect packs out there, most packs on the market now should have the correct instructions in both English and French."
Update 02/24/22, 2:30 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from the original poster and an image.
Update 02/25/22, 1:50 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from the brand One Degree Organic Foods.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Alice Gibbs is a Newsweek Senior Internet Trends & Culture Reporter based in the U.K. For the last two years ... Read more
