T1's apology falls flat as community calls out translation discrepancies

T1’s recent public apology, made in response to alleged aiding and abetting of racist and homophobic comments made on the Discord pertaining to Nick “LS” De Cesare, has fallen flat on community ears.

(Picture: @T1LoL (deactivated))

Many casters, players and coaches all voiced their displeasure at the organisation’s lacklustre response.

Many people are angry at this entire situation. I am thoroughly disappointed.

— Clayton Raines (@CaptainFlowers) November 16, 2020

Easy to say after the backlash, what matters is following through with what you say you stand for. Also you guys are hard avoiding specifics thinking your audience will forget. They wont.

— Barento (@Razleplasm) November 16, 2020

shame on you

— Sanchovies (@Sanchovies) November 16, 2020

Clayton “Captain Flowers” Raines, Barento “Razleplasm” Mohammed, and Karim “Sanchovies” are among the many who were unimpressed by T1’s apology, citing disappointment in the organisation not apologising directly to LS and facilitating racist abuse, as well as attempting to shift blame away from upper management.

I did a quick translation on things written in KR.
If you can understand different perspectives form both side of the globe, you will probably see what kind of trick T1 did here. pic.twitter.com/6F3QTdVBWl

— Rumorman (@HyunJaeLee6) November 16, 2020

More problems unfolded when discrepancies in the message between English and Korean became apparent, with the English translation seemingly apologising for failing to punish toxic fans while the Korean translation apologises more for poor social media communication.

Others noted T1’s attempt to shift blame for the failings in the Discord onto the moderators, despite screenshots and statements from said moderators showing orders coming down from the Board of Directors directly telling moderators to not act.

The end result has been the deactivation of T1 LoL’s Twitter account. No further statements have been made by the organisation, but scant hours after their apology was posted (and the deluge of more highly liked disparaging comments) T1 made the decision to axe the account. 

• Read more: T1 condemned for facilitating racial and homophobic slurs aimed at Nick 

T1’s strategy of attempting to avoid tackling public controversy continues to paint the organisation in a negative light; deleting their Twitter account after a poor apology does little to dissuade that sentiment.