The increase in global trade means that international companies cannot afford to make costly advertising mistakes if they want to be competitive.
Understanding the language and culture of target markets in foreign countries is one of the keys to successful international marketing. Too many companies, however, have jumped into foreign markets with embarrassing results.
Translation mistakes are at the heart of many blunders in international advertising.
General Motors, the US auto manufacturer, got a costly lesson when it introduced its Chevrolet Nova to the Puerto Rican market. "Nova" is Latin for "new (star)" and means "star" in many languages, but in spoken Spanish it can sound like "nova", meaning "it doesn’t go". Few people wanted to buy a car with that cursed meaning. When GM changed the name to Caribe, sales "picked up" dramatically.
Marketing blunders have also been made by food and beverage companies. One American food company’s friendly "Jolly Green Giant" (for advertising vegetables) became something quite different when it was translated into Arabic as "Intimidating Green Ogre".
When translated into German, Pepsi’s popular slogan, "Come Alive with Pepsi" came out implying "Come Alive from the Grave". No wonder customers in Germany didn’t rush out to buy Pepsi.
Successful international marketing doesn’t stop with good translations—other aspects of culture must be researched and understood if marketers are to avoid blunders.
When marketers do not understand and appreciate the values, tastes, geography, climate, superstitions, religion, or economy of a culture, they fail to capture their target market.
For example, an American designer tried to introduce a new perfume into the Latin American market but the product aroused little interest. The main reason was that the camellia used in it was traditionally used for funerals in many South American countries.
Having awakened to the special nature of foreign advertising, companies are becoming much more conscientious in their translations and more sensitive to cultural distinctions.
The best way to prevent errors is to hire professional translators who understand the target language and its idiomatic usage, or to use a technique called "back translation" to reduce the possibility of blunders.
The process used one person to translate a message into the target language and another to translate it back. Effective translators aim to capture the overall message of an advertisement because a word-for-word duplication of the original rarely conveys the intended meaning and often causes misunderstandings.
In designing advertisements for other countries, messages need to be short and simple.
They should also avoid jokes, since what is considered funny in one part of the world may not be so humorous in another.
One way to prevent errors in advertising in different countries is to（）
A. fire the translators who don’t know the target language
B. use the technique called "literal translation" to reduce the possibility of blunders
C. avoid cultural oversights and avoid certain jokes
D. explain in details when designing advertisement for other countries
