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DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN TO
YOU!
CAN YOU AFFORD TO LOSE YOUR CLIENTS AND SPOIL YOUR IMAGE???
Here are some "examples"
... you would really want to avoid!!! UNBELIEVABLE... BUT TRUE!!!
We trust you will enjoy reading this material !
Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux
used the following in 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 "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-ku-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-licking' 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 Chevy Nova
in South America, it was apparently unaware that "no va"
means "it won't go".
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's mistakenly
through the Spanish word "embarazar" meant embarrass.
Instead the ads said that "It won't leak in your pocket and
make you pregnant".
An American T-shirt marker 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 though 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.
Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France
called Cue, the name of a notorious adult magazine.
In Italy, a campaign for Schweppes Tonic
Water translated the name into Schweppes Toilet Water.
Japan's second-largest tourist agency was
mystified when it entered English-speaking markets and began receiving
requests for unusual sex tours. Upon finding out why, the owners
of Kinki Nippon Tourist Company changed its name.
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