Many organizations that outsource their work to overseas markets have lost credibility due to translation mistakes and blunders. Customers have less respect for businesses when there are cultural missteps and incorrect translations during transactions.
The worst offense seems to be when company employees translate directly from the dictionary to try to speak a language they do not speak fluently. For instance, the Frank Perdue slogan, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken" was seen all over Mexican billboards in a translation that said, "It takes a hard man to make a chicken affectionate." Obviously, this translation is way off the mark and does not represent Perdue's intent.
Another translation gave a vacuum cleaner a bad name. In England, a Swedish vacuum cleaner company embraced the slogan, "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux." In the United States, the advertisement failed miserably because "sucks" is slang for something that works poorly or is of poor quality.
Another example of this occurred in China, where machine translation has become very popular. A Chinese restaurateur who was anxious to obtain international clientele decided he would prominently place the restaurant's English name on the window next to its Chinese name. Unfortunately, the machine translation application the restaurateur chose to translate the name was not working correctly at that moment. The restaurant's English name is now prominently placed on the storefront and reads "Translate server error."
05 January 2009
