Selected Chevy Nova Awards
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honor of the GM's fiasco in trying to market this car in Central and
South America. "No va" means, of course, in Spanish, "it doesn't go".
The Dairy Association's huge success with the campaign "Got Milk?"
prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico. It was soon brought to
their attention the Spanish translation read "Are you lactating?"
Coors put its slogan, "Turn It Loose," into Spanish, where it was
read as "Suffer From Diarrhea."
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.
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).
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."