Say what?
A Chinese furniture company is facing complaints over the label sewn onto one of its more popular couches. The manufacturer apparently used Chinese software to translate the description of the couch from Chinese into English, and the phrase "dark brown" came out in English as "n***** brown". The 7-year old daughter of a black customer in Toronto allegedly discovered the error.
Based on my extensive research in Chinese restaurants, I'm well aware that not all product descriptions are translated accurately into English (unless I actually am supposed to hold that first chopstick against my "thurnb"). However, I have to agree with the Canadian customer that this is a pretty eggregious and offensive mistake that should have been caught. This is one of those marketing errors that rank up there with the Chevy Nova (translates to "Does not work" in Spanish), IKEA's Fartfull workbench or the short-lived Nintendo entertainment system called
"Gofuckyourselfandeatshitanddieyoulazypussbucket".
"Gofuckyourselfandeatshitanddieyoulazypussbucket".
3 comments:
That weblink to marketing errors is absolutely hilarious. A few of my favorites include KFC's slogan "finger lickin' good" translating in Chinese to "eat your fingers off" and this awesome Mazda marketing a minivan called Laputa (Spanish for "the prostitute") with the following description: "Laputa is designed to deliver maximum utility in a minimum space while providing a smooth, comfortable ride" and "a lightweight, impact-absorbing body."
One marketing error I didn't see on the page was a soap ad printed in the Middle east. It was a series of three drawings. The one on the far left showed dirty hands, the middle panel showed the hands being washed with the soap, and the panel on the right showed clean hands. Marketers didn't take into account that in Arabic one reads from right to left.
I thought "Gofuckyourselfandeatshitanddieyoulazypussbucket" was German.
Absolutely correct, Eric. Sorry, that was a failed Volkswagen campain.
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