It Loses Something In The Translation...
Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following
in an
American ad campaign: "Nothing sucks like an
Electrolux."
The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la.
Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after
thousands
of signs had been printed that the phrase means either "bite
the wax
tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax",
depending on the dialect. Coke then
researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic
equivalent, "ko-kou-ko-le," which can be loosely
translated as
"happiness in the mouth."
In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan "Come alive
with the
Pepsi Generation" came out as "Pepsi will bring your
ancestors back from
the dead."
Also in Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan
"finger-lickin' good"
came out as "eat your fingers off."
The American slogan for Salem cigarettes, "Salem - Feeling
Free," got
translated in the Japanese market into "When smoking Salem,
you feel so
refreshed that your mind seems to be free and empty."
When General Motors introduced the Chevy Nova in South America,
it was
apparently unaware that "no va" means "it won't
go." After the company
figured out why it wasn't selling any cars, it renamed the car in
its
Spanish markets to the "Caribe".
Ford had a similar problem in Brazil when the Pinto flopped. The
company
found out that Pinto was Brazilian slang for "tiny male
genitals". Ford
pried all the nameplates off and substituted Corcel, which means
horse.
When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads were
supposed to say "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass
you."
However, the company mistakenly thought the Spanish word
"embarazar"
meant embarrass. Instead the ads said that "It wont leak in
your pocket
and make you pregnant."
An American t-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish
market
which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of the desired "I
Saw the
Pope" in Spanish, the shirts proclaimed "I Saw the
Potato."
Chicken-man Frank Perdue's slogan, "It takes a tough man to
make a
tender chicken," got terribly mangled in another Spanish
translation. A
photo of Perdue with one of his birds appeared on billboards all
over
Mexico with a caption that explained "It takes a hard man to
make a
chicken aroused."
Hunt-Wesson introduced its Big John products in French Canada as
Gros
Jos before finding out that the phrase, in slang, means "big
breasts."
In this case, however, the name problem did not have a noticeable
effect on sales.
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