Many companies jump at the opportunity at becoming an international brand, unaware that
they’re about to join the ranks of the worst advertising translations!
How hard could it be to translate a few simple words?
For this list, All Things Top 5 looks at translation traps, be it company names, poorly translated
slogans, or just plain cultural screw ups.
Number 5 Coors “Turn It Loose” – The rocky mountain ice cold beer company, Coors,
learned the hard way that American slang doesn’t translate well in the Spanish market.
When Coors introduced its “Turn It Loose” campaign, the company underestimated the importance
of a proper translation.
The translation of the slogan used an expression commonly interpreted as “Suffer from diarrhea”
or “Get loose bowels”.
Although in the US, Britain and the rest of the English-speaking world, this is a perfectly
reasonable advertising slogan.
In Spain and Latin America, this was not the case.
While the campaign did make its mark on Spanish shoppers, it was for all the wrong reasons.
Needless to say, Coors did not want to induce this type of reaction from their customers
and quickly altered the slogan.
Number 4 Panasonic “The Woody” – In the 90’s, Panasonic released a PC for the
Japanese home market.
They wanted a mascot to show that their PC was friendly, cute, and approachable.
So the marketing team secured the rights to the beloved character Woody Woodpecker.
To tie in their computers to the Wood Woodpecker character, Panasonic called their new computer
“The Woody”.
To make matters worse, Panasonic decided to differentiate the touch screen capability
of their computer from their competitors by naming it the “Touch Woody – The Internet
Pecker”.
An American woman working for the company let the marketing team know why foreign journalists
were snickering during the pre-release briefing.
It was too late to change the “Woody” name, but Panasonic did change “Touch Woody”
to “Woody Touch Screen”.
Number 3 Frank Perdue “Tough Man, Tender Chicken” – In 1971, Perdue Farm embarked
on its first major advertising campaign.
They came up with a clever slogan “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken”.
This was fairly radical for the times because CEOs were not usually public spokespersons
for their firms.
The campaign was so successful that Frank Perdue went on to appear in over 200 Perdue
Farms’ television commercials.
While trying to penetrate into the Mexican market, the slogan didn’t translate well
into Spanish.
It ended up translating to “It takes a hard man to make a chicken aroused”.
Number 2 Nokia Lumia – In eager anticipation to release its first line of smart phones
that run on Windows Mobile OS, Finnish phone maker Nokia inadvertently named its smartphone
after Spanish call girls.
It seems that the team in charge of naming the phone didn’t complete its research when
entering the Spanish market.
The street slang of the word Lumia translated into “whore”, “hooker”, “prostitute”,
or “streetwalker”.
Nokia, who clearly was losing market share in the smartphone market needed every bit
of publicity to get people talking about their phone.
Yes, people were mentioning Nokia and Lumia all of over the web, but was it for the right
reasons?
The smartphones’ names sounded more like futuristic robot hookers with names like the
Nokia Hooker 710 or the Nokia Hooker 800.
This does gives Nokia’s slogan “Connecting People” a whole new meaning.
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Number 1 Sega – Tokyo based game developer Sega is actually an abbreviation of the first
two letters of the company’s original name, Service Games.
In Italy, “Sega” is the unofficial but most popular name for “male self-gratification”.
By that logic, would that mean the Sega Dreamcast is Italian for nocturnal emission?
This is why the company insisted the pronunciation is “See-ga”.
Unfortunately for the Italian soccer team Sampdoria, Sega paid several million dollars
for the right to put its name on their jersey.
We’re sure these uniforms came in handy.
Many Italians were surprised to learn that Sega is not pronounced See-ga, but Say-ga,
outside of Italy.
Even today, the company still alters the pronunciation of its name in all of its advertisements.
Judging on some of Sega’s old ads, they might not necessarily mind the association.
Do you agree or disagree with our list?
Are there any other companies that got lost in translation?
Comment below and watch our other videos and subscribe to All Things Top 5.