Half the battle is won if a company is able to make a product stand out among all the others, and catch the eye of a consumer. All that is true, unless the “thing” that makes your product stand out is the fact that your packaging or labeling is weird. When you look closely, it is interesting to see how many companies spell or translate phrases in weird ways. You would think that companies would be willing to spend some money to get someone check their translations, or even Spell Check their catchy phrases that are printed in big bold letters!

For instance, even such a big company like Proctor and Gamble sometimes gets lost when translating. For people who speak fluent French, Charmin Ultra has a phrase on their packaging that says “Garante conenable de NOUVEAU! Petit pain”, which consists of two typos and which also translates to “Expedient guarantee of a fresh bun”. Although “n” and “m” are similar, “bun” and “bum” mean two completely different things!

Also, when I go visit Taiwan, I encounter products like this on a daily basis. Even big companies that have many product lines in Canada seem to be capable of messing up English to Mandarin translations. Maybe they do not want to waste money into hiring more than one translator, hoping that nobody would read would be able to read and understand the descriptions. However, this is extremely unprofessional, and sometimes the translation are just cute harmless mistakes. In some cases, it can make potential consumers not want to buy a product. If it were a food item, you may not want to make a purchase because if a company can be so careless with the packaging of their product, there is a chance that the content of the product itself is not trustworthy.

Source: http://bloomingmarketing.com/translation