How about a cold, refreshing bottle of Bite the Wax Tadpole?
We live in an age when there is a lot of talk about robots equipped with artificial intelligence taking over the jobs now performed by human beings.
Indeed, there have been many huge strides made in machines helping humans with daily tasks. Spell-checking programs help editors avoid typographical mistakes. Autopilot programs help avoid “pilot error”, which can be fatal.
Still, computerized spell checks aren’t always good at detecting the incorrect use of a correctly spelled word. Airlines have had to retrain human pilots who became too dependent on having machines doing the flying — a dependence that can cause disaster.
So, too, it goes with translation and interpretation, those most delicate of language arts.
It’s easy to make mistakes. When I was in a college summer program in Mexico, we used to laugh at Englishspeaking students who used the word embarazada to mean embarrassed. It’s true that they sound alike. But what the students were saying was that they were pregnant.
When my wife and I went to dinner at a nice restaurant in Shanghai, I noticed with some discomfort that “husband” was on the menu. I never learned what exactly that was but, not wishing to tempt fate, I ordered something else.
No doubt we soon will move beyond the rudimentary apps and computer programs that help us bumble through communication with speakers of languages we don’t know well. The mistakes created using today’s programs are epic, and the risks are increased exponentially by slang or regional expressions.
Marketing is where translation can turn into hilarity or even failure for a business.
One example that has always given me a chuckle is Colgate, the name of a famous toothpaste produced by a US giant consumer products company, Colgate-Palmolive.
The toothpaste is also marketed in Latin America, which for the most part raises no eyebrows.
But in some parts of South America, especially in Argentina and Uruguay, a nonstandard verb form is used that turns the name of the toothcompany paste into “Go hang yourself ”.
The Coca-Cola Co explains on its website that when the began selling their flagship soft drink in China in 1927, they found shopkeepers had used a variety of Chinese characters that sounded like the brand — without considering the meaning. One meant “female horse fastened with wax,” and another, “bite the wax tadpole”. A myth grew that the company had used those names, it said.
The company compromised a little on the phonetics and decided on Ke Kou Ke Le, which has the more pleasing meaning of “to permit the mouth to be able to rejoice” in Mandarin.
Inc.com contributing editor Geoffrey James compiled a list of some of the epic fails in global branding. Here are a few examples:
• Clairol branded its curling iron for hair with the name Mist Stick in German, even though “mist” is German slang for manure.
• Coors beer translated its Turn It Loose slogan into Spanish by using a colloquial term for having diarrhea.
• Mercedes-Benz entered the Chinese market using the homonym Bensi, meaning “rush to die”.
• The slogan for Pepsi Cola, Pepsi Brings You Back to Life, was debuted in China as “Pepsi brings you back from the grave”.
• Nike had to recall thousands of shoes because a decoration meant to resemble fire on the back resembled the Arabic word for Allah.
James notes, however, that his list does not include what is often called the most famous translation blunder — that selling the Chevrolet Nova under that name in Spanish-speaking countries
Bilingual: Crawfish
led to poor sales. (No va means “won’t go” in Spanish.) That’s because it didn’t happen. No va in Spanish is distinct from Nova, which retains its original Latin meaning of “suddenly bright star” in English and Spanish as one word.
The fact-checking site Snopes says the Nova sold from 1972 to 1978 in Mexico and several other Spanish-speaking countries with no apparent problem.
Also, Mexico’s national oil company, Pemex, has used the name in marketing gasoline.