Pith  

June 2001: Translations That Missed the Target

 A perfect style of language [is] that in which a man speaking to 500 people, of all common and various capacities, idiots or lunatics excepted, should be understood by them all, and in the same sense which the speaker intended to be understood. –Defoe

From http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/translation/fun.htm and used by permission of Volodymyr Goncharov, Poltava, Ukraine

1. The Dairy Association's huge success with the campaign "Got Milk?" prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico.  It was soon brought to their attention the Spanish translation read "Are You Lactating?"

2. Coors put its slogan, "Turn It Loose" into Spanish, where it was read as "Suffer From Diarrhea."

3. Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."

4. Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick", a curling iron, into Germany only to find that "mist" is slang for manure.  Not too many people had a use for the "Manure Stick".

5. When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as the U.S., with the smiling baby on the label.  Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the labels of what's inside, as many people can't read.

6. Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious pornographic magazine.
7. An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit.  Instead of "I Saw the Pope" (el Papa), the shirts read "I Saw the Potato" (la papa).

8. Pepsi's "Come Alive With the Pepsi Generation" translated into, "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back From the Grave" in Chinese.

9. The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as "Kekoukela", meaning, "Bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax", depending on the dialect.  Coke then researched 40,000 characters to find a phonetic equivalent "Kokou Kole", translating into "Happiness in the Mouth".

10. Frank Perdue's chicken slogan, "It takes a strong man to make a tender chicken" was translated into Spanish as "It takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate".

11. When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to have read, "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you". The company thought that the word "embarazar" (to impregnate) meant to embarrass, so the ad read: "It won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant".

12. When American Airlines wanted to advertise its new leather first class seats in the Mexican market, it translated its "Fly In Leather" campaign literally, which came out "Fly Naked" (vuela en cuero) in Spanish.

13. One foreign firm tried to sell a mineral water named "Blue Water" in Ukraine and there were lots of ads on the local TV, where whispering woman's voice spelt "Blu-u-u-e Water", but it sounded in Ukrainian just the same as "pu-u-u-uke" ("vomit").

14. Discovery channel in their telecast about aircraft translated "ammunition" as "trappings" into Russian (second word in Russian sounds like English word Ammunition), so instead of "cannon-shots" or "shells" the supersonic fighter carries clothing in its wing!

15. Again the Discovery channel: not only engineers can die of laughing watching their telecasts in Russian but everybody can. See: a cock ostrich skewers eggs instead of hatchs (in Russian these two verbs differ in a symbol).