One of the most difficult things for a company is to find a name that translates through many languages. Nowadays companies are probably more aware to check the meaning of their brand name or the name of the product before launching it in a new country. However, this hasn't stopped some hilarious examples of not quite getting the name of the product or the advertisement right in the past. Some of these may just be urban legend, but it just goes to show that you need to be careful.

1. Chevvy Nova

A while ago General Motors made a nice little car called the Chevvy Nova. It was one of their leading cars and sold pretty well, so naturally they decided it would be a great product to export around the world. However, in South America sales seemed a lot less than they were expecting. They weren't sure why this was and so decided to look into it. Finally they found a local who told them that in Spanish, “no va” means “not go”. So they changed the name from the “Chevvy No Go” to something more appropriate and unsurprisingly saw sales pick up.

2. Fartfull

Ikea is a famous Swedish brand around the world and they use the fact that the names of the furniture in Swedish can sound cool, exotic and interesting in English and other languages. When they brought out a new range of “FartFull” workbenches for children though, they wondered why all the people looking at the range of children's furniture always had a big smile on their faces and held their noses when they looked in the drawers.

3. Finger Lickin’ Good

Most of us are probably aware of the famous slogan for Kentucky Fried Chicken. Yes, the slogan is “finger lickin' good”. However, on expanding into the Chinese market the translator managed to translate it into “eat your fingers off”. Customers entered the shops with hands hidden in their pockets, hoping to get some nice chicken without losing their fingers.

4. Parker Pens – Embarazar

One of the most well known 'false friends' in Spanish is the word embarazar. Rather than meaning embarrassed, it means to get pregnant. The person who worked at Parker Pens and volunteered to write the slogan for their product in Spanish wasn't aware of this. That lie on his CV that he spoke and wrote native Spanish was about to be found out. He took the slogan, “It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you” and translated it into, “It won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant!” The Spanish people were relieved by this fact.

5. Arabic Cold Remedies

There are lots of similar examples of companies translating adverts into Arabic. Arabic reads from right to left. Thus, when you have pictures in the advert in pays to swap those pictures around as well. A well known drug company marketed a new remedy in the UAE and took their American advert involving a few pictures and got it translated. The first picture was of someone ill, the next picture showed the person taking the medication, the last picture showed

them looking well. Unfortunately, the captions above each picture were reversed when the advert was translated. They wondered why people weren't lining up to buy this remedy that made you look sick! In other examples similar to this, washing powder manufacturers created an advert where putting your clothes in the washing machine changed them from being sparkling clean to being covered in dirt.

6. Clairol’s Mist Stick

You may well have heard of the hair products company, Clairol. They are always coming out with innovative products and one of their latest, best selling products was the “Mist Stick” – a curling iron which was selling very well. They naturally looked to expand the market for this curling iron, including exporting it into Germany, however, they didn't realise that mist is the word for 'manure' in German. I would be interested to meet those people that did buy a 'manure stick' though and see what they did with it. Perhaps a few farmers who had constipated horses bought it?

7. Coors – Turn it Loose

Another famous mistake when going into the Spanish markets was made by Coors. Their latest slogan “Turn it Loose” was proving very effective in English speaking markets and so they decided to move it into their Spanish markets as well. “Get Diarrhoea” didn't quite have the same positive impact though. Next time they made sure they didn't hire a translator from a rival company!

8. Kagome

Kagome is a Japanese drinks company founded by Ichitaro Kanie, an early Japanese pioneer in tomato cultivation. Since its foundation many years ago, Kagome has grown to become the largest producer of Japanese tomato products and a producer of a large variety of vegetable and fruit drinks as well. Attempts to take the brand into Brazil hit a problem though, in Portuguese their brand name sounds exactly like “I just pooped in my pants”. I don't know if many Brazilians were lining up to try their products.

9. Got Milk?

Another example of getting your work experience student to do the translations into Spanish was with the American Dairy Association. They had had a great success with the campaign “Got Milk?” Looking to expand into Mexico they got it this slogan translated and tried to give American farmers a helping hand in this new market. It was soon brought to their attention that the Spanish translation read “Are you lactating?” Mexicans were confused why Americans were so interested if they were lactating or not.

10. Ford Pinto

Finally, we have another example of a car company getting it wrong. Ford seemed to be having a problem in Brazil where sales of the Pinto were flopping.  Ford decided to look into the problem and found out that Pinto was in fact Brazilian slang for “tiny male genitals.” Brazilian men weren't so keen to be seen driving around in a Pinto. They changed it to 'horse' and suddenly Brazilian men seemed to be a little bit more proud to be driving their cars around.