Manchester City has made an embarrassing error of judgement in choosing the name for their new stadium.

The club have recently built a new stadium in Manchester and have called it the Etihad Stadium. However, once the news was announced about the new name it did not take long for messages to swamp social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook as it seems that the Arabic translation for the word means “United”. This is of course highly unsuitable as Manchester City’s main footballing rivals are Manchester United.
Football fans were soon to pick up on the irony of the new name and it left many City fans red faced. However the club were quick to defend the new name saying that in actual fact the word means “union” in Arabic. Translators and language experts are divided on this though and it seems that the word can actually have multiple meanings including united, union, alliance and friendship.
Despite assurances that the word does not mean united some of the fans are not happy with the choice of the name for the new stadium which was meant to signify a new era for the club. Many fans think that the name is far too close for comfort to Manchester United.
No matter which way you look at it, it just goes to prove how an oversight in translation can cause embarrassing errors that may sometimes be very hard to live down.

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