My brother was walking home one fine summer afternoon when he spotted
a young woman grieving over a pet dog that was recently struck by an
automobile. The pet had just finished dying at the distraught womens
feet…
Allen: Miss?
Woman: <Sob!> Huh? <Sniff…>
Allen: Miss, do you need a taxidermist?
Cracking an international market is a goal of most growing corporations. It shouldnt be that hard, yet even the big multi-nationals run into trouble because of language and cultural differences. For example…
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.
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.
Also in Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan finger-lickin good came out as eat your fingers off.
The American slogan for Salem cigarettes, Salem – Feeling Free, got translated in the Japanese market into When smoking Salem, you feel so refreshed that your mind seems to be free and empty.
When General Motors introduced the Chevy Nova in South America, it was apparently unaware that no va means it wont go. After the company figured out why it wasnt selling any cars, it renamed the car in its Spanish markets to the Caribe.
Ford had a similar problem in Brazil when the Pinto flopped. The company found out that Pinto was Brazilian slang for tiny male genitals. Ford pried all the nameplates off and substituted Corcel, which means horse.
When Parker Pen marketed a ballpoint pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to say It wont leak in your pocket and embarrass you. However, the companys mistakenly thought the spanish word embarazar meant embarrass. Instead the ads said that It wont leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.
An American t-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the spanish market which promoted the Popes visit. Instead of the desired I Saw the Pope in Spanish, the shirts proclaimed I Saw the Potato.
Chicken-man Frank Perdues slogan, It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken, got terribly mangled in another Spanish translation. A photo of Perdue with one of his birds appeared on billboards all over Mexico with a caption that explained It takes a hard man to make a chicken aroused.
Hunt-Wesson introduced its Big John products in French Canada as Gros Jos before finding out that the phrase, in slang, means big breasts. In this case, however, the name problem did not have a noticeable effect on sales.
Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno mag.
In Italy, a campaign for Schweppes Tonic Water translated the name into Schweppes Toilet Water.
Japans second-largest tourist agency was mystified when it entered English-speaking markets and began receiving requests for unusual sex tours. Upon finding out why, the owners of Kinki Nippon Tourist Company changed its name.
and finally…
In an effort to boost orange juice sales in predominantly continental breakfast eating England, a campaign was devised to extoll the drinks eye-opening, pick-me-up qualities. Hence, the slogan, Orange juice. It gets your pecker up.
By the way, these are all true!
Uncomfortable, expensive and hard to get out of!
A harp is a nude piano.
If things were left to chance, they would be better.
Monica has been receiving a lot of kidding about her weight. She
considered to have her love handles removed, but decided against it as she
might lose her hearing if they cut off her ears.
So I responded by saying Im not an ugly loser, but you might ask the guy behind the mirror that same question.
When VW Rabbits first came out, they still had a lot of bugs in them.
En el convento del pueblo estaba como interna una monjita que era demasiado grosera; siempre que estaban platicando con sus compañeras de cualquier cosa ella decia muchas groserÃas. Las demás ya estaban cansadas de ella y en una platica que tuvieron llegaron a la conclusión de que cuando la monja grosera dijera una de sus groserÃas la dejarÃan sola en el lugar en que estuvieran.
En una ocasión estaban platicando de la guerra y sus consecuencias, y una de ellas dijo:
Si yo pudiera mandarÃa un camión lleno de alimentos para toda esa pobre gente que no tiene que comer.
Otra dijo:
Si yo pudiera mandarÃa un camión lleno de medicinas para los pobres enfermos.
Y en eso dice la monja grosera:
Si yo pudiera mandarÃa un camión lleno de putas para todos esos cabrones.
Y de repente todas las monjas se paran de sus lugares y se dirigen a la puerta y la monja grosera les dice:
¡ESPERENSE, PENDEJAS TODAVIA NO LLEGA EL CAMION!
Computer novices may feel like theyre alone these days, but some of the following calls to IBMs help center show there are plenty of people out there who still are inching onto the information superhighway. After a caller gave a technician her PCs serial number, he scanned a database of registered users and responded, I see you have an Aptiva desktop unit. Before he could say another word, the caller shrieked and said shed be right back. When the customer returned, the technician asked if she was all right. The caller responded: Had I realized you could see me, I never would have telephoned in my bathrobe.
A customer who had just received a laptop computer asked about the power-saving feature known as hibernate. Would this hibernate device work in the spring and summer, the caller asked.
Another caller explained she had received a gift of software on 5.25-inch diskettes, but she had only a 3.5-inch disk drive on her computer. The technician said she had two options: Get a second disk drive, or use 3.5-inch diskettes. The customer called back later, now complaining that her disk drive was making a terrible noise. And this despite the fact that she was using a 3.5-inch diskette, she said. After a bunch of questions, the technician determined the caller had used a pair of scissors to trim the 5.25-inch diskettes to fit the 3.5-inch drive.
A caller, perplexed that his new desktop computer – the one that was supposed to do everything short of bringing on world peace – was doing nothing, cried out for help. No problem, the IBM technician said. First, open a window to launch a specific program. The conversation continued, and the caller asked a few moments later if it might be all right to close the window. Why, the IBM technician asked. Because, the caller responded, it was getting very chilly.