You've repeated what you've just said, in English, slowly and loudly just expecting to be understood. Obviously you weren't but it's nice to know that it's not just us that have these problems. It also affects big multinational companies as well.
The American Dairy Associations campaign "Got Milk" was so successful that they decided to extend it to Mexico as well. The problem being the direct Spanish translation for "Got Milk" was are you lactating?
When Electrolux started selling vacuums in the US they used the slogan "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux". Hmmm. not quite Electrolux
In the Chinese market KFCs slogan "finger lickin good" comes out as eat your fingers off.
When Pepsi started marketing its products in China a few years back, they translated their slogan, "Pepsi Brings You Back to Life" pretty literally. The slogan in Chinese really meant, "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Grave." Mmmmm, zombie Pepsi!
In Italy, a campaign for "Schweppes Tonic Water" translated the name into the much less thirst quenching "Schweppes Toilet Water." - I'm guessing not the perfume?
Chinese translation also proved difficult for Coke, which took two tries to get it right. They first tried Ke-kou-ke-la because when pronounced it sounded roughly like Coca-Cola. It wasn't until after thousands of signs had been printed that they discovered that the phrase means "bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax," depending on the dialect. Second time around things worked out much better. After researching 40,000 Chinese characters, Coke came up with "ko-kou-ko-le" which translates roughly to the much more appropriate "happiness in the mouth." - Not sure that one's much better!
Ford introduced the Pinto in Brazil. After watching sales go nowhere, the company learned that "Pinto" is Brazilian slang for "tiny male genitals." Ford pried the nameplates off all of the cars and substituted them with "Corcel" which means horse.
Happy cruising
I had been learning to speak Turkish some years ago and whilst on holiday there one year we were in our hotel dining room when a rather rude young lady asked (or rather TOLD) our waiter to get her a glass of peach juice,not understanding much english our ever helpful waiter looked bemused but set off and returned with a glass of orange juice.The young lady (not too happy about this)pulled her face at the juice and told him she wanted peach,the waiter returned again with another drink again not peach.By this time the woman(obviously had gotten out of the wrong side of her bed that morning)was getting angry with him and with gritted teeth looked directly at the waiter and in voice to be heard by all repeated PEACH.PEACH.PEACH.The waiter,looking very hurt by this time,left the table and didn't return.After hearing this woman moaning and groaning i had the greatest of pleasure in informing her that peach (spoken in the aggressve way as she did)actually means b-----d in Turkish,lol.She didn't appologise to the waiter,she was probably too embarrased.Ginnie66
ReplyDeleteRolls-Royce were going to follow the Silver CLOUD with a new car called the Silver MIST until some pointed out the problem with the GERRMAN translation(you are little to coy with the translation as MANURE: it's given as CR*P on google translate and worse on other translaters) even the best manufacturers in the world can get naming wrong!!!!
ReplyDeletePete, Caerphilly