From “American Demographics” magazine, here’s a look at how shrewd American business people translate their slogans into foreign languages.
When Braniff translated a slogan touting its upholstery, “Fly in leather,” it came out in Spanish as “Fly naked.”
Chicken magnate Frank Perdue’s line, “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken,” sounds much more interesting in Spanish: “It takes a sexually stimulated man to make a chicken affectionate.”
When Pepsi started marketing its products in China a few years back, they translated their slogan, “Pepsi Brings You Back to Life” pretty literally. The slogan in Chinese really meant, “Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Grave.” Now that’s one to keep away from the barcode scanner
When Coca-Cola first shipped to China, they named the product something that when pronounced sounded like “Coca- Cola.” The only problem was that the characters used meant “Bite the wax tadpole.” They later changed to a set of characters that mean “Happiness in the mouth.”
A hair products company, Clairol, introduced the “Mist Stick”, a curling iron, into Germany only to find out that mist is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the manure stick.
