Facebook has blamed a technical error after the social media site translated Chinese leader Xi Jinging's name into 'Mr S***hole'.
The posts were translated into English from Burmese as the Chinese leader visited Myanmar where he and Aung San Suu Kyi signed agreements for Beijing-backed infrastructure plans.
A statement about the visit published on Suu Kyi's official Facebook page was littered with references to 'Mr S***hole', when translated into English.
A headline on a local news source also appeared as 'Dinner honors president s***hole'.
It was not clear how long the issue lasted but Google's translation function did not show the same error.
"We fixed a technical issue that caused incorrect translations from Burmese to English on Facebook.
"This should not have happened and we are taking steps to ensure it doesn't happen again.
"We sincerely apologize for the offense this has caused," Facebook said in a statement.
The Facebook system did not have President Xi Jinping's name in its Burmese database and guessed at the translation, the company said.
Translation tests of similar words that start with "xi" and "shi" in Burmese also produced "s***hole", it added.
Facebook is blocked in mainland China but it is not blocked in Hong Kong and mainland companies advertise elsewhere on the platform, making China Facebook's biggest country for revenue after the United States.
It is setting up a new engineering team to focus specifically on the lucrative Chinese advertising business.
Facebook has faced numerous problems with translation from Burmese in the past. In 2018 it temporarily removed the function after a Reuters report showed the tool was producing bizarre results.
