Funny ads, Clean Funny Jokes
The following are items found overseas in which people have made inappropriate use of English words for various products, and bizarre menu items in restaurants.
Cold shredded children and sea blubber in spicy sauce – China
Indonesian Nazi Goreng – Hong Kong
Muscles Of Marines/Lobster Thermos – Cairo
French fried ships – Cairo
Garlic Coffee – Europe
Sole Bonne Femme (Fish Landlady style) – Europe
Boiled Frogfish – Europe
Sweat from the trolley – Europe
Dreaded veal cutlet with potatoes in cream – China
Rainbow Trout, Fillet Streak, Popotoes, Chocolate Mouse – Hong Kong
Roasted duck let loose – Poland
Beef rashers beaten up in the country peoples fashion – Poland
Fried friendship – Nepal
Strawberry crap – Japan
Pork with fresh garbage – Vietnam
Toes with butter and jam – Bali
French Creeps – L.A.
Fried fishermen – Japan
Teppan Yaki – Before Your Cooked Right Eyes – Japan
Pepelea’s Meat Balls – Romania
Product Names
Clean Finger Nail – Chinese tissues
Kolic – Japanese mineral water
Creap Creamy Powder – Japanese Coffee Creamer
Swine – Chinese chocolates
Libido – Chinese soda
Pocari Sweat – Japanese sport drink
Shocking – Japanese chewing gum
Cat Wetty – Japanese moistened hand towels
Pipi – Yugoslavian orangeade
Polio – Czechoslovakian laundry detergent
Crundy – Japanese gourmet candy
Superglans – Netherlands car wax
I’m Dripper – Japanese instant coffee
Zit – Greek soft drink
Colon Plus – Spanish detergent
These are fabricated corporate slogans that would never have made if far if they entered the real world.
Microsoft: “How much are you going to pay today?”
MTV: “Loud and easy to spell.”
Saks 5th Avenue: “You Could Shop Here if You’re Poor, But That Would be Stupid!”
Iguana: “The other green meat.”
Nike: “Just buy the shoes, you flabby spineless lump!”
Daisy Air Rifles: “Keeping kids off your lawn for over forty years.”
Canon Photocopiers: “Quit calling them Xeroxes!”
Apple MacIntosh: “Hey, we thought of it first!”
Radio Shack: “You’ve got questions, we’ve got geek losers!”
Professional Bowling on NBC: “Oh, why don’t you just go ahead and kill yourself instead?”
Below are fine examples of what happens when marketing translations fail to reach a foreign country in an understandable way.
Coors put its slogan, “Turn it loose,” into Spanish, where it was read as “Suffer from diarrhea.”
Clairol introduced the “Mist Stick,” a curling iron, into German only to find out that “mist” is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the “manure stick”.
Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.
The American slogan for Salem cigarettes, “Salem-Feeling Free”, was translated into the Japanese market as “When smoking Salem, you will feel so refreshed that your mind seems to be free and empty.”
When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the beautiful baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the label of what’s inside, since most people can’t read English.
An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope’s visit. Instead of “I saw the Pope” (el Papa), the shirts read “I saw the potato” (la papa).
In Italy, a campaign for Schweppes Tonic Water translated the name into “Schweppes Toilet Water.”
Pepsi’s “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” translated into “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave,” in Chinese.
When Parker Pen marketed a ballpoint pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to say “It won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you.” However, the company mistakenly thought the spanish word “embarazar” meant embarrass. Instead the ads said that “It wont leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.”
The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means “bite the wax tadpole” or “female horse stuffed with wax” depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, “ko-kou-ko-le,” which can be loosely translated as “happiness in the mouth.”
Also in Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan “finger-lickin’ good” came out as “eat your fingers off.”
When General Motors introduced the Chevy Nova in South America, it was apparently unaware that “no va” means “it won’t go.” After the company figured out why it wasn’t selling any cars, it renamed the car in its Spanish markets to the Caribe.
Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine.