Translate before you market

Every book on international marketing specially points out the importance of checking how your brands are translated. Being a huge international company is not an excuse for doing your homework before entering a new market. Ford started marketing its Nova brand in Latin America but forgot to check it out that ‘no va’ means “It doesn’t move” in Spanish.

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!

Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine.

In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" came out as "Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead."

The Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux tried to sell its goods in America but didn't help itself with this slogan, "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."

Now I’d like to add my five kopecks. When Danone entered the Russian market in the early 90’s they started with its popular in Eastern Europe yoghurt brand “Bledina”. Unfortunately this word for Russians sounds like бледина – ‘a loose whore’. A friend of mine was working as a manager at Danone in Moscow. They made desperate phone calls to Danone HQ trying to explain them the problem. The typical answer was, “You Russians don’t know anything about marketing. So, shut up!” Danone bosses acted like real bledinas for almost a year while my poor friend was baited by everyone.