70 lines
3.3 KiB
Plaintext
70 lines
3.3 KiB
Plaintext
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When Coca-Cola first shipped to China, they named the product something that
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when pronounced sounded like "Coca-Cola." The only problem was that the
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characters used meant "Bite the wax tadpole." They later changed to a set of
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characters that mean "Happiness in the mouth."
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When Braniff translated a slogan touting its upholstery, "Fly in leather," it
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came out in Spanish as "Fly naked."
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Coors put its sloga, "Turn it loose," into Spanish, where it was read as
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"Suffer from diarrhea."
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Chicken magnate Frank Perdue's line, "It takes a tough man to make a tender
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chicken," sounds much more interesting in Spanish: "It takes a sexually
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stimulated man to make a chicken affectionate."
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When Vicks first introduced it's cough drops on the german market, they were
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chagrined to learn that the german pronunciation of "v" is f --- which in
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german is the gutteral equivalent of "sexual penetration."
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Ford had a similar problem in Brazil when the Pinto flopped. The company
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found out that Pinto was Brazilian slang for "tiny male genitals". Ford
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pried all the nameplates off and substituted Corcel, which means horse.
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When Parker Pen marketed a ballpoint pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed
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to say "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you." However, the
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company's mistakenly thought the spanish word "embarazar" meant embarrass.
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Instead the ads said that "It wont leak in your pocket and make you
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pregnant."
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An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the spanish market
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which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of the desired "I Saw the Pope"
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in Spanish, the shirts proclaimed "I Saw the Potato."
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Not to be outdone, Puffs tissues tried later to introduce its product, only to
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learn that "Puff" in german is a colloquial term for a whorehouse. The English
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weren't too fond of the name either, as it's a highly derogatory term for a
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non-heterosexual.
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Chicken-man Frank Perdue's slogan, "It takes a tough man to make a tender
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chicken," got terribly mangled in another Spanish translation. A photo of
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Perdue with one of his birds appeared on billboards all over Mexico with a
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caption that explained "It takes a hard man to make a chicken aroused."
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Hunt-Wesson introduced its Big John products in French Canada as Gros Jos
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before finding out that the phrase, in slang, means "big breasts." In this
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case, however, the name problem did not have a noticeable effect on sales.
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The Chevy Nova never sold well in Spanish speaking countries. "No va" means
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"it doesn't go" in Spanish.
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Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a
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notorious porno mag.
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When Gerber first started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same
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packaging as here in the USA - with the ute baby on the label. Later they
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found out that in Africa that companies routinely put pictures of the label of
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what's inside since more people can't read.
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When Pepsi started marketing its products in China a few years back, the
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translated their slogan, "Pepsi Brings you Back to Life" pretty literally. The
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slogan in Chinese really meant, "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the
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Grave."
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A hair products company, Clairol, introduced the "Mist Stick", a curling iron,
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into Germany to find out that mist is slang for manure. Not too many people
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had use for the manure stick.
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