Cracking an international market is a goal of most growing
corporations.
It shouldn't be that hard, yet even the big multi-nationals run into
trouble because of language and cultural differences.
For example...
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-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."
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.
In Italy, a campaign for Schweppes Tonic Water translated the name
into
Schweppes Toilet Water.
