Getting Fouled Up in Translation - Internet language problems - Industry Trend or Event

Industry Standard, The, Dec, 2000 by Josh Sens

It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken. But it took a bad translation to turn a poultry advertisement into foreign porn.

Imagine the clucking in the corporate office when poultry seller Perdue Farms discovered that its well-known slogan, reworked into Spanish, came out as: "It takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate." Breast meat would never seem the same.

Leaping between languages is always slippery business for companies expanding overseas, and the Net is no exception. While 86 percent of Web sites are composed in English, 50 percent of surfers speak something else.

Online translation services like Worldlingo, Idiom and eTranslate have emerged to help Web retailers reach out abroad. Their clients range from music dealer CDNow to photo album-maker Ememories and designer-clothing outlet eOffprice.

According to a study by IDC, shoppers are four times more likely to buy if addressed in their native tongue. "It's a compelling argument," says Worldlingo's Tanja Hill, "to have your translation done right."

Not all translation problems stem from language. (Most Web sites, for example, leave seven spaces for phone numbers; in Japan, phone numbers are eight digits long) But when they do, they can be doozies.

Consider the case of Mimeo.com, a printing and binding service that was forced to delay its Latin American launch after learning that Spanish speakers might read "mimeo" as "I wet myself." At least the company spared itself embarrassment, unlike Kentucky Fried Chicken some years ago. The Colonel's famous tag line, "It's finger-lickin' good," translated into Chinese, became "Eat your fingers off," which isn't good for business and is certainly no way for an affectionate chicken to behave.