Posts Tagged ‘automotive’
Preventing Mistranslation is Easier than Retracting Translation Blunders
Benjamin Franklin said, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." This is true in translation. As illustrated when a magazine ironically added Google mistranslations to an article about translation quality in bold, red print, it is easier to prevent mistranslations than it is to retract mistranslations and fully recover from [...]
International Brand Checks Save Brand Names
International brand checks can help to prevent disastrous international blunders. The following example from the article "Prevent International Blunders" shows an example of one company that does this correctly. ...Rolls-Royce is a company that proactively works to prevent these types of blunders. Just before Rolls-Royce launched the Silver [...]
Motorcycle Translation Bloopers
A small scandal-that-never-really-was erupted when motorcycle racer Nicky Hayden's remarks were mistranslated last week. Hayden had commented that "it is a shame" (meaning "it is a pity") fellow racer Casey Stoner is leaving the Ducati team for the Honda team in 2011. However, his words were translated into Italian and then back into English as [...]
Customer Silence Can Be More Dangerous than Complaints
If a translation receives a lot of negative feedback, the company that published it may wish for silence. However, sometimes a reaction of silence can mislead a company into complacency and a false sense of security. A real-life exchange that illustrates the danger of silence recently happened between a website marketing manager and one of his [...]
e-Learning Localization Errors Cost $1 Million
Toronto-based AlertDriving, incorporated as Sonic e-Learning, Inc., aggressively expanded into more than 20 countries in two years before realizing its product had serious localization flaws, according to a January 2010 article in the Wall Street Journal. The lessons were poorly translated and culturally inappropriate. The company faced some [...]
Body by Fisher
In his article "How to Push a Body Abroad without Making It a Corpse," in the August 10, 1964 issue of Business Abroad and Export Trade, author Edward M. Mazze told of a translation problem experienced by General Motors (GM) in Belgium. Fisher Body has been building automobile bodies for GM cars for more than 100 years. Some would say the "Body [...]
International Brand Check | A Service to Protect Your Brand Investment
An international brand check can save your brand investment. Without one, your company brand could suffer embarrassing and costly damage, and repairs may require more time and money than you can afford. This global brand checking service is something that should be done even earlier than most marketing executives realize. Most marketing and [...]
Racing Turns Racist Due to Product Translation Error
A German company learned the hard way that its PR firm lacks cultural sensitivity and professional linguistic ability. One year ago, the German "tuning shop" AVUS Performance souped up an Audi RS6 Avant and released the car with the terribly offensive name "Audi RS6 White Power." Yes, the color of the car was white. However, the non-native [...]
Tootle Horn Melodiously, then with Vigor!
This blooper has actually been around since May of 1920 or earlier. However, many international business books and emails have reported that this Japanese-to-English translation blooper was seen within recent years in Tokyo rental car brochures. Clumsy English translations of Japanese traffic rules were brought back from Japan to the western [...]
Urban Legends about Translation
When people read the translation bloopers posted here, they often volunteer to share one that they've previously heard. It is usually one of about a dozen alleged mistranslations that have been popularized on the internet and in dozens of books about international business. These are the same funny anecdotes that most of us in the translation [...]
