From "American Demographics" magazine

Here's a look at how shrewd American business people translate their slogans into foreign languages:

When Braniff translated a slogan touting its upholstery, "Fly in leather," it came out in Spanish as "Fly naked."

Chicken magnate Frank Perdue's line, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken," sounds much more interesting in Spanish: "It takes a sexually stimulated man to make a chicken affectionate."

When Vicks first introduced its cough drops on the German market, they were chagrined to learn that the German pronunciation of "v" is f - which makes "Vicks" in German the phonetic equivalent of "sexual penetration."

Not to be outdone, Puffs tissues tried later to introduce its product, only to learn that "Puff" in German is a colloquial term for a whorehouse.

The Chevy Nova never sold well in Spanish speaking countries. "No va" means "doesn't go" in Spanish.

When Gerber first started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as here in the USA - with the cute baby on the label. Later they found out that in Africa that companies routinely put pictures on the label of what's inside since more people can't read.

Alain Gottcheiner, informs us that in French "Gerber" means "to puke" and belongs to the same language level. Not a very good advertisment!

When Pepsi started marketing its products in China a few years back, they translated their slogan, "Come alive, you're in the Pepsi generation" pretty literally. The slogan in Chinese really meant, "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Grave."

When Coca-Cola first shipped to China, they named the product something that when pronounced sounded like "Coca-Cola." The only problem was that the characters used meant "Bite the wax tadpole." They later changed to a set of characters that mean "Happiness in the mouth."

A hair products company, Clairol, introduced the "Mist Stick", a curling iron, into Germany to find out that mist is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the manure stick.

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"What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.".............
Dan Quayle

[This message has been edited by Pinhead (edited 03-07-2001).]

Those were great Pinhead.

* An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of the desired 'I Saw the Pope' in Spanish, the shirts proclaimed 'I Saw the Potato.'

* 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 & empty.'

* In Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan 'finger-lickin' good' came out as 'eat your fingers off.'

* In Germany, Sunbeam's Mist-Stick curling iron was translated into manure wand.

* When spelt phonetically, Esso means stalled car in Japan.

* Fresca, the soft drink, had problems when it was sold in Mexico. Fresca is slang for lesbian.

* The word Orang Utang means 'jungle man' in Bahasa, the indigenous language to Malaysia, Papua New Guinea & much of the Phillipines. There are so many regional dialects, that people living 5 miles apart in Sarawak, the largely jungled area of island Malaysia often cannot understand each other.

* The name of the reindeer in the 'Original Eight,' usually named as 'DONNER' is actually named 'DonDer'. [Source: original source printings of poem]

* The term 'Chicken Pox' didn't come from people believing that they came from chickens, it came from the Old English term 'gican pox', which means the itching pox.

* In Quebec 'take out chicken' was translated to 'poulet pour sortir' or 'chicken to go out with'.

The following tidbits aren't about product names in foreign languages, but they are about some slogans that you might find hard to believe that they we were once prominent cigarette advertising slogans:

"Just what the doctor ordered." – L & M cigarettes

"More doctors smoke Camels than any other Cigarette." – Camels cigarettes

Physician heal thyself!!

(Source: THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY BOOK OF 20TH CENTURY QUOTATIONS)