Recently, a claim “Afghanistan Cricket Board Mistakenly Wished 75th Birthday to Hazratullah Zazai Instead of 25th Birthday” has spread through social media.
Some posts circulating on Facebook regarding this claim can be seen here, here,here and here. Archive version of those posts can be seen here, here,here and here. The same claim being spread on Twitter can be seen here and here.
Fact-check
Following an investigation by the Rumor Scanner team, it has been found that the Afghanistan Cricket Board did not wish Hazratullah Zazai a 75th birthday instead of his 25th birthday, as claimed. In fact, in the post, the Afghanistan Cricket Board wished Hazratullah Zazai a happy 25th birthday in both Pashto and English.
In the search, we found a post on the official Facebook page of the Afghanistan Cricket Board where they wished Hazratullah Zazai a happy birthday. The first part of the post was written in Pashto, and the Facebook system automatically translated it, showing ‘75th birthday’.
Some Facebook and Twitter users have shared screenshots of this auto-translated caption displayed by Facebook, claiming that the Afghanistan Cricket Board mistakenly wished Zazai a 75th birthday instead of 25.
However, upon clicking ‘See more’ on the post, it becomes apparent that the post was written in both Pashto and English languages. The Pashto text appears first, followed by the English at the last. In the English part, a clear wish for Zazai’s 25th birthday is expressed, “Wishing our explosive top-order batter Hazratullah Zazai a very happy 25th Birthday. His 162* runs against Ireland are still the 2nd highest score in the IT20s.”
Later, the part written in Pashto was translated through Google Lens and it was revealed that it contained 25th birthday wishes for Hazratullah Zazai. Additionally, even after copying and pasting the first part of the post into Google Translate, it still appeared as ‘25th Birthday Wishes’ in the translation.
So it is clear that The Afghanistan Cricket Board actually wished Hazratullah Zazai a happy 25th birthday. However, due to Facebook’s faulty automatic translation, it caused confusion that he was wished a happy 75th birthday instead of his 25th.
In addition, Facebook’s automatic translation of the post produced three incorrect translations of Hazratullah Zazai’s age. The FB auto translations of the post showed Zazai’s age as 75, 62, and 3 years, respectively.
In a brief overview, the Afghanistan Cricket Board’s official Facebook page posted wishing Hazratullah Zazai a happy 25th birthday on March 23, with captions in both Pashto and English. However, when Facebook displayed an incorrect automatic translation of the Pashto part of the post, it created confusion, and people propagated this confusion without properly reviewing the entire post and its translation. The incorrect translation led to the claim that Hazratullah Zazai was wished a happy 75th birthday instead of his actual age of 25.
So, the claim that the Afghanistan Cricket Board wished Hazratullah Zazai a 75th birthday instead of his 25th birthday is false.
