The Language Barrier, Commercial bloopers

GM's trying to market their Chevy Nova car in Central and South America proved a fiasco. "No va" in Spanish means, "it doesn't go." Ford Motor Company's Fiera means "ugly old woman" in Spanish. Pinto is a slang term meaning "small male appendage." Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign, "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux". Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick," a curling iron, into Germany only to find out that "mist" is German slang for manure. Rolls-Royce Silver Mist was not successful either. German Merdol did not sell in France (Merde! means Shit!) When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the smiling baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the labels of what's inside, since many people can't read. Vicks in Germany had to change its name into Wicks as 'Vicks' is associated with a vulgar verb Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine. 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). These also flopped: pepper sauce from Ghana named: Shitto French soft drink: Pschitt a Finnish product to unfreeze car locks Super Piss

Japanese flops: A nondairy creamer called Creap A candy called Carap A soft drink called Calpis Chocolates in a Band-Aid-style box called Hand- Maid Queer AIDS A fingernail cleaner called Nail Remover Pepsi's "Come Alive With the Pepsi Generation" translated into "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back From the Grave" in Chinese. 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." 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." 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!" 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 meant "Fly Naked" (vuela en cuero) in Spanish. pencils for school bearing antidrug slogan 'Too Cool to Do Drugs' were propagating drugs when after sharpening the words 'Too', 'Cool' and 'to' disappeared one after another

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Boas was puzzled by a Japanese paper that kept referring to `stricken mass distributions.' Unable to figure out what this meant, he wrote to the journalist's editor. It turned out that a referee's report had told the author, `The term “generalized mass distribution” is no longer used. The word “generalized” should be stricken.' ”
[From American Scientist, March-April 1996, p. 192. Submitted by Judith Weiss Cohen, Pawtucket, Rhode Island.] hot dog shouldn't be translated into German as 'heisser Hund', which means a dog on heat When a French-Canadian politician was applauded by an American audience, he beamed, saying, "I thank you for giving my wife and me the clap! I thank you from the heart of my bottom and my wife thanks you from her bottom too!" Middle Eastem oil mogul lifted his glass, looked his American lady companion in the eye, and said with dignity, "Well. ..up yours!" The title of Steinbeck's the Grapes of Wrath is in Japan: Angry Raisins.