Pretty much everybody knows the famous case of the Nova, the American-made car that supposedly did not do well in Latin America because “No va” in Spanish means, “It won’t go.” Well I hate to break it to you, but most of us Latins learned in school what a Nova was. I think the first time we heard of the alleged problem, it was from an American telling the story.
Anyway, it was catchy enough and it has made the rounds; you’d think since then companies would have learned to be very careful about naming products or services that will be sold to a non-English speaking market. Not so much. I’ve seen literature in Spanish for an American-made beauty product called “Sylvan moss”. The translation was “Musgo selvático”. If you live in the tropics, the last thing you want to use on your skin is something with “musgo”, which is closer to mold than to moss.
Pretty yucky.
How about this one; brochures for a well-known organization invite young Hispanic boys to build their character using the verb “construct”, which in Spanish means to build with materials; it’s not the verb you’d choose when your intention is to talk about developing or strengthening.
So what’s my point? In advertising, it’s not enough to translate. In all the cases above, the translation was grammatically correct. But from the communications point of view it was hilarious. Not memorable. Not exciting. Just hilarious. It’s very rarely possible to simply translate a good headline or an astute product name. A good writer has to create it from scratch.