Does Your Brand Travel, or Get Lost in Translation?

My research practice focuses on the best practices, services, and technologies that allow a company to strut its stuff on the world stage. That means Web site globalization, localized products, and lots of translation. And it’s the translation part that people understand best.

Whenever I’m clinking glasses at a cocktail party, the “how do you fill your day?” discussion ultimately revolves around the most understandable part of the global business equation—putting words into other languages.

Typically, conversation quickly turns to the film “Lost in Translation” (the Google count for this oft-used phrase rivals the billions and billions of hamburgers sold by McDonald’s). Following that, there’s almost always the reference to the apocryphal failure of the Chevy Nova in Latin America – “that’s really some mistake,” my martini-swilling friends will note. “No va means ‘it doesn’t go.'” How could someone make a product naming mistake like that?” No one actually did, but it is still a good story.

I usually play along, citing some other commonly cited examples of mis-translation. You’ve probably read many of them over the years. How about “I saw the Pope” (el Papa) translated as “I saw the potato” (la papa) on t-shirts sold to commemorate the Pope’s visit or the “Got milk?” slogan rendered as “Are you lactating?” in Spanish.

Mis-translation and product names that don’t travel well are real problems for global product managers and Web site owners. But wait! There are some really good examples of bad translations and cross-border mistakes out there. Here are a few of my favorites you’re welcome to share when you’re trying to get some budget to verify that your product names don’t mean something awful in another language:

• For a keynote a few years ago at an automotive industry conference, I found candidates for “Bad Product Name of the Year” among Japanese car makers selling in Latin America: Mazda Laputa (interpreted by Spanish speakers as la puta, which translates to “the whore”), Mitsubishi Pajero (slang for masturbation), and Nissan Moco (dried nasal mucus).
• This year, Car and Driver magazine reviewed the translated claims of Chinese automakers at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show. The brochure for the Liebao CS6 SUV claimed “Gene of being Wild: VM engine brings you the long-awaited shock… only by stepping on the accelerograph, the mph will come to the peak in a second” and the BYD F3 sedan has “fuel efficiency stomach.”
• When I tried the WiFi at the Hotel Klee am Park in Wiesbaden, I read the English-language instructions cautioning me that the “General technical supposition is a reticulation-card. Please arrange your reticulation-card to IP (automatic internet register).” Huh?
• A friend who was an interpreter at the United Nations told me about a colleague who tried to amplify an emotionally-delivered idiomatic expression, suggesting that “we need to grab the bull by something other than the horns.” Ouch.

But bad translations aren’t always funny. They can have serious consequences:

• Financial markets will shake. Back in May 2005 a reporter for the China News Service pieced together a story about how currency appreciation might affect the market. The People’s Daily had it translated into English without the subjunctive case, stating that China decided to revalue its currency 1.26% a month for a year. Bloomberg’s spider in London picked up the story and European equity markets rose on the news. While it was quickly repudiated, the error did cause market tremors.
• Countries might disappear. In October 2005 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reportedly called for Israel to be wiped off the map, but apparently he really “just” wanted to get rid of its government. True to form, Ahmadinejad didn’t clarify his remarks after the mistranslation, further complicating matters.
• Companies will get into trouble. A senior executive at Yahoo had to apologize for not giving U.S. Congressmen information about the company’s role in the imprisonment of a Chinese dissident, Shi Tao. According to Yahoo, a bad translation by an employee of a 2004 order from the Chinese government caused the problem.

What are the lessons for marketing executives? A name that works well in one language may be pretty ugly, funny or misleading in another. Documents and Web sites that sound perfectly good in their home-market idiom might sound pretty awful when translated into another language by someone without the language skills to do the job right.

Your task is to find a professional translator, language service provider, or marketing agency that can help you avoid losing your job to a bad translation.

Don DePalma is the founder and chief research officer of the research and consulting firm Common Sense Advisory, and author of the premier book on business globalization “Business Without Borders: A Strategic Guide to Global Marketing.”