When I was in business school at the University of Southern California, I remember a story about the Chevy Nova being renamed in Mexico, since "no va" in Spanish means "no go". Some other examples of unfortunate naming, when rolled out to international markets include:

• The Dairy Association's huge success with the campaign "Got Milk?" prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico. It was soon brought to their attention the Spanish translation read "Are you lactating?"
• 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 Germany only to discover that "mist" is slang for manure. Sales were disappointing for some reason.
• When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the smiling baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the labels of what's inside, since many people can't read.
• Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine.
• Pepsi's "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" translated into "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave", in Chinese.
• The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as "Kekoukela", meaning "Bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax", depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 characters to find a phonetic equivalent "kokou kole", translating into "happiness in the mouth".
• When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to have read, "it won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you". Unfortunately, the company thought that the word "embarazar" (to impregnate) meant to embarrass...

These examples are courtesy of Winds of Change and E-Tailers Digest. Click here to read the entire article on Winds of Change.

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