Posts Tagged ‘brand’
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 [...]
“Bugs that Crawl” Tractors
Bad things happen when graphic designers and other non-linguists take it upon themselves to become translators, as illustrated in the recent article "Irony: Magazine mistakenly adds Google mistranslation to article about translation." According to A Short Course in International Marketing Blunders by Michael White, the tractor manufacturer [...]
Coca-Cola Preserves Brand Strength in China
Coca-Cola thought ahead to preserve brand strength in China, as related in article, "Lost in Translation: Preserving Brand Strength in Foreign Markets" by Globalization Group vice president Adam Wooten in the February issue of Utah Business Magazine. Marketing managers often laughingly relate how Coca-Cola allegedly committed a huge blunder when [...]
Bite the Wax Tadpole
One of the world's most famous translation blunders is often incorrectly attributed to Coca-Cola. In fact, it was the fault of careless shopkeepers who translated Coca-Cola's brand name without permission when Coca-Cola was not moving fast enough to keep up with demand. Read more in the article, "Lost in Translation: Preserving Brand Strength in [...]
Local Export Assistance Remedies International Headaches
Considering all that can go wrong when exporting to international markets, businesses can find it very reassuring to have someone on their side when tackling new exporting challenges. Local export and import assistance proves to be a great resource when trade challenges arise. In the 1980s, the Iranian government encouraged a razor manufacturer [...]
Airline Rendezvous Lounge
Author David A. Ricks writes of another airline promotion lost in translation in the book "Blunders in International Business." You can read about several airline translation bloopers in the international business column "In global airline marketing, idioms must be handled carefully," but this one caused serious PR damage. A U.S. airline that [...]
Iranian Brand Stinks in Qatar
Tiz, an Iranian razor manufacturer learned that its brand name really stunk in Qatar. As mentioned previously, many companies will benefit from an international brand check before entering new markets. The following account is from "Educator Insights: International Marketing Blunders Revisited - Some Lessons for Managers" by Tevfik Dalgic and [...]
Avoid Text to Avoid Translation
Sometimes the best way to speed up localization is to completely avoid translation. That does not mean that you do not actually globalize your message, or that you leave everything in English, it just means that sometimes you can convey your message without words. In those rare cases, you can save a lot of time and expense, much as you would [...]
Global Airline Marketing Idioms Must Be Handled Carefully
<blockquote>In 1987, Braniff Airlines ran ads on television, on radio and in newspapers flaunting the fact that its jets were equipped with all-leather seats. Spanish-language radio ads in the Florida market were the first to reveal an unintended double entendre. Braniff had translated its "fly in leather" slogan as fly "en cuero," which [...]
P&G’s International Brand Check
"Proctor and Gamble likely understood the benefits of a single global brand nearly 70 years ago when it considered launching a new soap named "Dreck" in the United States. According to the book New Products Management by Charles Crawford, shortly before the company introduced the soap to U.S. consumers, it discovered "Dreck" sounded like German [...]
