5 Hilarious translation fails in marketing
We all are human beings, so sometimes we make mistakes. They could be either a small or a significant one. However, for business, even a small mistake could cost a fortune, let alone reputation and brand image. In this week blog, Aurora Digital would like to review some examples of marketing mistranslations. Most of them, in fact come from big companies, are serious yet hilarious ones to look at.
1. ASOS
Earlier this year 2018, the British fashion online retailer ASOS has made a huge mistake. Instead of “discover fashion online”, the brand printed 17,000 plastic bags labelled “discover fashion onilne”. A silly spelling mistake, however, went viral after the brand decided to fix it in a hilarious, yet sophisticated way. They called the bags with spelling mistakes “It’s limited edition” bags, in response to customers. Many have left positive comments on how the brand reacted to the incident as well as how brilliant and quick it was for the marketing team to response the public. People liked the way that Asos did not want to throw away all the bag just because of a small mistake.
2. KFC
An example on how mistranslation could create a embarrassing message should go to KFC. When KFC tried to set its foot into Chinese market in Beijing, they made a serious accident. The original brand’s slogan is “Finger-lickin’ good” which was later translated into “Eat your fingers off” in Chinese language. Fortunately, this incident did not damage a lot KFC brand. KFC today is one of the biggest fast-food restaurant chains in China though.
3. Pepsi
Just like KFC, Pepsi again has made a big mistake when it was translating slogan in English to Chinese. The sloganwhich was originally “Pepsi brings you back to life”, became something like “Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead”. Yes, you heard it right! Imagine if you read it, what would you react?
4. Electrolux
Another example of how necessary it is to have a native to help you with translation is that of Electrolux. The Swedish electronics making company actually had a good and strong statement, however the way they put it seemed in the reverse. Instead of describing how power their machine is, in 1960s commercial, they put “nothing sucks like an Electrolux”. Despite being grammatically right, for most English-speaker, this means something totally different. Next time, Electrolux might want to take it into account who should be charged of translating process.
5. Honda
An instance that cultural and linguistic understanding do play a role is the new car line that Honda released in 2001 called “Fitta”. Honda attempted to introduce their new products to Nordic market without knowing what “Fi**a” means in nordic languages. Just for your knowledge, “fi**a” means female genitals in Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. As a result, the brand was later renamed to “Honda Jazz”
Next time when releasing a new product marketing campaign, you’d want to make sure your campaign content is mistake-free and polish-looking. Or much more effortlessly, let Aurora Digital do the job for you. With the know-how we have accumulated over the past projects, we guarantee we will assist you and your business the best tailored-fit solutions.
This blog post is originally posted on www.auroradigital.eu