When the American corporate giant, PepsiCo, planned to venture into Chinese markets, it must have imagined that the young generation in China would go crazy after their drink, Pepsi. Their imagination however crash-landed when their tagline which reads as “Come alive with the Pepsi generation” in English was translated to “Pepsi brings your relatives back from the dead” in Chinese, and the Chinese took it as an offence or insult to their dead ancestors.

Coca-Cola is not far behind Pepsi while committing translation error if we see how they translate English to Chinese. Their name itself was translated incorrectly. When translated into Chinese, Coca-Cola became Ke-Kou-Ke-La which means “bite the wax tadpole” or “female horse stuffed with wax” depending upon the dialect of the people. The translator should have understood that names are not to be translated but simply transliterated.

Similar was the case of KFC. When American food-chain KFC wanted to spread its wings in China, it thought that its tagline “Finger-lickin’ good” would be translated into Chinese to mean “so tasty that one will keep licking one’s fingers even after finishing the meal”. The translator, however, used his/her knowledge (sarcasm) to translate it as “eat your fingers off.” Now, why will anyone have chicken if the brand asks its customers to eat their fingers instead of chicken?

American company, GE, which is headquartered in Boston, ventured into European markets with a new name GPE. It, however, was absolutely oblivious to the fact that its name had been translated into French as “J’ai pete” which means “I farted”. Now, you can imagine how ugly the situation must have turned for GE.

American beer maker Coors created a funny image for itself with a translation mistake. The mistake cost it dear. While translating its slogan “Turn it loose” from English to Spanish, the translator translated it as “suffer from diarrhea”. The Spanish people must have got scared of the beer and turned their faces away upon sight of it.