taylor@limbo.Intuitive.Com (Dave Taylor) (08/07/90)
As part of a book I'm working on for Springer-Verlag, I would like
to collect some amusing anecdotes about companies that have tried
to market their product, be it computer software/hardware, or even
food or clothing, but failed due to a lack of understanding of the
foreign marketplace.
Examples are the story of Chevy finding that the "Nova" didn't sell
very well in Mexico; nova means "doesn't go" in Spanish. Coke also
committed a similar faux pas when they cracked the Chinese market
for their soda; they choose Chinese ideograms that 'looked like
the "coca cola" letters and ended up with a soda whose name actually
was something like "the drink to die consuming".
I also recall hearing a story about the Mac trashcan icon and what
the locals took it for in Italy, but unfortunately I can't find
any more specific traces in my head on that one...
I will credit all submissions, and would ideally like a reference
with your submission, but pure anecdotal stories are fine too. If
anyone knows of any sources I can dig up in a library or on an online
service or similar, I would be absolutely delighted to hear about it!
(perhaps the Harvard Business School library, for example?)
The book, by the way, is on "Creating International Software" and is
a logical followon to my chapter "Real Life Experiences Internation-
alizating Software" for the only just released Elsevier book "Designing
User Interfaces for International Use", edited by Dr. Jakob Neilsen.
Thanks greatly for any assistance! Please respond via email rather
than follow up articles, too!
Sincerely,
-- Dave Taylor
Intuitive Systems
Mountain View, California
taylor@limbo.intuitive.com or {uunet!}{decwrl,apple}!limbo!taylormanis@cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis) (08/08/90)
1) In the early '70's, an organization called the Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games was formed in Canada, to be responsible for the '76 Montreal Olympics. The organization was named COJO (Comite' Organisatif des Jeux Olympiques), which lasted until a letter from COJO arrived at an office in Buenos Aires. In Argentina, at least, COJO (pronounced like the salmon) means `fuck'. They promptly changed their name to Comite' des Jeux Olympiques. 2) I was recently told that IBM has discontinued the RISCStation/6000 designation for their RIOS machines. In Australia, `RS' means what `BS' means here. [This one isn't an internationalization one, but...] 3) When HP brought out its first pocket calculator, the HP-35, they touted its much easier to use `Reverse Polish Notation'. (The Polish logician Jan Lukasiewicz wrote about prefix and postfix notations circa 1950; they were often called `Lukasiewicz notation' (forward and reverse), but people who were non-Polish found this hard to pronounce, so people said `prefix Polish' and `postfix Polish' instead. Apparently, HP got complaints about the `ethnic slur', so modern HP literature uses `RPN' without ever explaining what it means (`rotated paronomastic Naugahyde'?). -- \ Vincent Manis <manis@cs.ubc.ca> "There is no law that vulgarity and \ Department of Computer Science literary excellence cannot coexist." /\ University of British Columbia -- A. Trevor Hodge / \ Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1W5 (604) 228-2394
diamond@tkou02.enet.dec.com (diamond@tkovoa) (08/08/90)
In article <9068@ubc-cs.UUCP> manis@cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis) writes: >they were often called `Lukasiewicz notation' (forward and >reverse), but people who were non-Polish found this hard to pronounce, >so people said `prefix Polish' and `postfix Polish' instead. Apparently, >HP got complaints about the `ethnic slur', so modern HP literature uses >`RPN' without ever explaining what it means I take it that the chemical element Polonium (and others) will also be renamed? And Hindu-Arabic numerals? -- Norman Diamond, Nihon DEC diamond@tkou02.enet.dec.com This is me speaking. If you want to hear the company speak, you need DECtalk.
lambert@spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au (Tim Lambert) (08/08/90)
>>>>> On 7 Aug 90 19:52:41 GMT, manis@cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis) said: > 2) I was recently told that IBM has discontinued the RISCStation/6000 > designation for their RIOS machines. In Australia, `RS' means what `BS' > means here. No, `bullshit' means `nonsense', while `ratshit' means `no good'. > 3) When HP brought out its first pocket calculator, the HP-35, they The HP-25 had a key labelled `R/S'...
ath@prosys.se (Anders Thulin) (08/09/90)
In article <1902@tkou02.enet.dec.com> diamond@tkou02.enet.dec.com (diamond@tkovoa) writes: >I take it that the chemical element Polonium (and others) will also be >renamed? Especially Americium ... -- Anders Thulin ath@prosys.se {uunet,mcsun}!sunic!prosys!ath Telesoft Europe AB, Teknikringen 2B, S-583 30 Linkoping, Sweden