The Translation Hall of Shame

By using translation instead of adaptation, a company ends up with a less-effective message, potential damage to its brand, missed opportunities and lost sales ... and when the translated message is spectacularly off the mark, it can go viral and take on a life of its own.

• When Coors translated its slogan “Turn it loose” into Spanish, it was understood as “Suffer from diarrhea.”
• Chicken magnate Frank Perdue’s “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken” catchphrase took on strange connotations in Spanish with “It takes a sexually stimulated man to make a chicken affectionate.”
• Puffs tissues introduced its product in Germany only to be informed that “puff” in German is a colloquial term for a house of ill repute.
• The Chevy Nova never sold well in Spanish-speaking countries. “No va” means “doesn’t go” in Spanish.
• When Pepsi launched in China, its translated slogan “Come alive, you’re in the Pepsi generation” suggested that “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave” to the Chinese.
• When Coca-Cola was introduced in China, its brand sounded something like “Coca-Cola.” The only problem was that the Chinese characters meant “Bite the wax tadpole.” Coke later changed the characters to mean “Happiness in the mouth.”
• Clairol launched its “Mist Stick” curling iron in Germany only to find out that mist is slang for manure. Not too many people had any use for the manure stick.