Translated Adverts

  • 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?" (when a woman produces milk for her baby)

  • Coors put its slogan, "Turn It Loose," into Spanish, where it was read as "Suffer From Diarrhoea."

  • Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux." (in U.S. English 'It sucks.' is slang for 'It's crap.')

  • Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick," a curling iron, into Germany only to find out that "mist" is slang for manure in German. Not too many people had use for the "Manure Stick."

  • 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.

  • 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 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.

  • Hunt-Wesson introduced Big John products in French Canada as Gros Jos. Later they found out that in slang it means "big breasts".

  • Bank Caixa Econômica Federal in Brazil offered in an advertisement "HOT MONEY" (in English), obviously unaware of the fact that hot money means "Stolen Money" in normal slang.

  • 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."

  • 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."

  • Vauxhall tried to market a new car in South America. Unfortunately they kept the European name of 'Nova', which of course in Spanish means: "It doesn't go."