The nominees for the Chevy Nova Award, named in Honor of the
GM's fiasco in trying to market this car in Central and South
America ("nova" means, of course, in Spanish, "it doesn't go").

1. The Dairy Association's huge success with the campaign
"Got Milk?" prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico.
It was soon brought to their attention the Spanish translation
read "Are you lactating?"

2. Coors put its slogan, "Turn It Loose," into Spanish, where
it was read as "Suffer From Diarrhea".

3. Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the
following in an American campaign, "Nothing sucks like
an Electrolux".

4. Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick," a curling iron, into
Germany only to find out that "mist" is slang for manure.

5. When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they
used the same packaging as in the US, with the smiling
baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies
routinely put pictures on the labels of what's inside, since
many people can't read.

6. Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue,
the name of a notorious porno magazine.

7. An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the
Spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of
"I Saw the Pope" (el Papa), the shirts read "I Saw the Potato"
(la papa).

8. Pepsi's "Come Alive With the Pepsi Generation" translated
into "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back From the Grave" in
Chinese.

9. The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as "Kekoukela",
meaning "Bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax",
depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 characters
to find a phonetic equivalent "kokou kole", translating into "happiness
in the mouth".

10. Frank Perdue's chicken slogan, "It takes a strong man to make
a tender chicken" was translated into Spanish as "it takes an aroused
man to make a chicken affectionate".

11. When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads
were supposed to have read, "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass
you". The company thought that the word "embarazar" (to impregnate)
meant to embarrass, so the ad read: "It won't leak in your pocket and
make you pregnant!"

12. When American Airlines wanted to advertise its new leather
first class seats in the Mexican market, it translated its "Fly In
Leather" campaign literally, which meant "Fly Naked" (vuela en
cuero) in Spanish.

No wonder the rest of the world has such a difficult time understanding us!