Ads Gone Wrong
If advertisers think that they can just translate an ad and use it in another country, they'll often be wrong. And if they don't take care about their use of a foreign language the advertisers will look foolish. Here is a collection of real-life mistakes: ads that went wrong!
Nike had a TV commercial filmed in Kenya with local tribes people. The camera closes in on one man who speaks in native Maa. As he speaks, the Nike slogan ''Just do it." appears on the screen. The Kenyan is really saying, ''I don't want these. Give me the big shoes.'' Nike's executives thought that nobody in the U.S. would what he was saying. Wrong! Some people DID notice.
In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan ''Come alive with the Pepsi generation.'' came out as ''Pepsi will being your ancestors bock from the dead.'' The idiom come aliue