Reprint from Fastener World Magazine, Vol. 162

One needs only to type “cross cultural mistakes” into a search engine to be inundated with example after example of grievous marketing blunders made because of poor language translation or cultural misunderstanding. Consider these recent examples; an Italian ad that translated Schweppes Tonic Water into “Schweppes Toilet Water”, a Chinese ad that translated the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan, “finger-licken’ good”, into “Eat your fingers off”, or the Coors Brewing Company slogan, “Turn it loose”, understood in a Spanish ad campaign as “Suffer from Diarrhea.”