Wax Tadpole / Sexual Chicken Vector
ywu
"Marketing Management," Philip Koptler, 9th Edition, Chapter 1 page 27:
"When Coca Cola tried to market to China in 1979, for instance, it
discovered that Mao's simplification of Chinese characters had turned
the literal meaning of Coca-Cola into "Bite the wax tadpole." Coca Cola
solved this problem by using four Mandarin characters that mean "Can
Happy, Mouth Happy." Many people remember what happened when Frank
Perdue's ad slogan "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken" - was
rendered into Spanish for TV broadcasts to the US Latino Population.
The garbled and offensive result was "It takes a sexually excited man to
make a chicken affectionate."
The cite is from Richard Barnet, _Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations
and the new world order_ (New york, Simon & Schuster, p 170-71 and
Czinkota, Ronkainan and Tarrant, The Global Marketing Imperitive, P249.
1) There is no single literal meaning of Coca-Cola. Chinese is a tonal
language and any number of fragmented meanings can be derived, none of
which (in Mandarin) mean anything close to BTWT. The closest "Bite" is
"kun" The closest wax is "La" and the closest tadpole is "Do"
Kun-La-Do? I don't think so.
2) Coca Cola today means, literally, able-mouth able-happy and
idiomatically, you can drink it and it can make you happy. Close but no
cigar.
Bo Bradham
Andrew Rogers <rog...@hi.no.spam.com> wrote:
>
>A recent one that I've seen vectored a couple places: The "Got Milk?"
>ad campaign was supposedly translated into Spanish as "Are you
>lactating?". I'd heard enough similar stories to set off my bogometer
>immediately.
>
>An Alta Vista search (+got;milk +lactating) found only one reference,
>and it is no longer available:
>
> Reno Women in Advertising
> October Luncheon- Are you Lactating? This is the literal
>spanish translation of [cut off here]
> http://www.reno.net/business/rwa/ - size 2K - 19 Dec 96
>
>Does anyone know the actual Spanish translation as it appeared in the
>ad campaign, and whether or not it is indeed a reference to lactation?
Check this out:
: Wynter, Leon E
: Business & race: Group finds right recipe for milk ads in
Spanish
: Wall Street Journal
: Mar 6, 1996
: California's milk processors scored a national hit with their
irreverent "Got milk?" ads to stoke state consumption. The
TV ads, by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco,
seemed to appeal to every demographic group except one:
Hispanics whose dominant language is Spanish. The California
Milk processor Board decided to target the group with
separate ads in Spanish. However, the "Got milk/" punchline
translated roughly to "Are you lactating?" Finally, a new
question was developed, "Have you given them enough milk
today?"
Crazy thing I found while looking this up: www.got-milk.com.
I didn't stick around long enough to figure it out.
Bo "had to moove along" Bradham
--
"If it's their mistake, tough. If it's our mistake we negotiate."
- Overheard
Barbara Mikkelson
Often missed in this "bite the wax tadpole" legend is that it's always
passed along as *Coca-Cola* came up with this mistranslation, no other
explanation is entertained. As I understand various newspaper cites (one
of which Bo posted an excerpt from), the crazy translation came from
shopkeepers trying to advertise what they had in the shop and
backasswardsly coming up with a phonetic rendition of Coca-Cola;
therefore, it wasn't Big Red's mistake at all.
What keeps the "Coca-Cola screwed up!" factoid firmly fastened with wax to
popular culture is the underlying need to believe that the big companies
make horrendous mistakes neither you nor I would be foolish enough to.
It's sour grapes city in that we enjoy a large corportion's mistake as
it's our way of bringing them down to our level -- if we can laugh at
them for being foolish, then we don't feel as awed by them.
Well and good... except when that mindset blinds one to the real story.
Here the need to blame Coca-Cola overshadows the truth; that it wasn't
their mistake.
Barbara "just for the chase of it" Mikkelson
--
Barbara Mikkelson | We either learn from history or, uh, well, something
bmik...@best.com | bad will happen. - Bob Church
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Nathan F Miller
Bo Bradham <bra...@panix.com> quoth and wrote:
>ywu <REMO...@mich.com> wrote:
>>"When Coca Cola tried to market to China in 1979, for instance, it
>>discovered that Mao's simplification of Chinese characters had turned
>>the literal meaning of Coca-Cola into "Bite the wax tadpole." ...
>
>That's interesting that he blames it on Mao. That's a new one on
>me. It also implies that before Mao "Coca-Cola" would've meant
>something other than "bite the wax tadpole."
I find the idea most strange. The character simplifications, which
happened at different times and in different manners China, Japan,
the Koreas, were about making particular symbols easier to write.
A character that took twenty strokes to write, say, would get a new
substitution that only took fifteen, but had a similar look. I can't
think of any reason why the possible meanings of a set of _sounds_
would change in any way because of this. The maneuver is similar
to the spelling reforms that have occasionally happened in European
countries.
Nathan of Simple Character
Ken Kobayashi
Maybe it has to do with the fact that in China, there are different
dialects (or different languages) that share a common written language
but have very different sounds. Mao tried to standardize on one of `
them. (I can't remember which one - Cantonese???)
- Ken
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ken Kobayashi http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~kobayash/
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory kkoba...@cfa.harvard.edu
George Byrd
Speaking about "Re: Wax Tadpole / Sexual Chicken Vector"
In <alt.folklore.urban> On 17 May 1997 11:40:28 GMT,
<bmik...@best.com (Barbara Mikkelson)> said:
>Well and good... except when that mindset blinds one to the real story.
>Here the need to blame Coca-Cola overshadows the truth; that it wasn't
>their mistake.
So, they even got to you too.
George "it must be the bourbon and distilled water"
--
Opinions above are NOT those of APAN, Inc. and are NOT legal advice.
"You're going to have to answer to the Coca-Cola Company."
<< Col, Bat Guano to Grp. Capt.Lionel Mandrake, from _Dr_Strangelove_ >>.
Mark Kinney
Barbara Mikkelson (bmik...@best.com) wrote:
: Often missed in this "bite the wax tadpole" legend is that it's always
: passed along as *Coca-Cola* came up with this mistranslation, no other
: explanation is entertained. As I understand various newspaper cites (one
I've heard a similar story with Pepsi, actually, mistranslating "Come
Alive With Pepsi" directly into "Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from
the dead." So it's not just Coke. :-)
--
Mark Kinney | mailto:albe...@iglou.com | http://www.iglou.com/nations/
"Touch passion when it comes your way, Stephen. It's rare enough as it
is; don't walk away when it calls you by name."
-- Marcus Cole, "Babylon 5: Lines of Communication"
Maggie Newman
mig <m...@satlink.comSBLOCK> wrote:
>
[Snipped good analysis of multilingual market slogan practice]
>
>Even when a product is launched and the
>slogan or marketing campaign is later pulled, it's usually just
>because it didn't work, one way or another, not because of some simple
>linguistic faux pas.
This being the case, which I believe it is, I wish I knew why presumably
reputable marketing textbooks turn out to be one of the prime vectors
for these stories! This thread started with a quote from one such. It
has been my misfortune to read (aloud, alas!) from MANY more such
textbooks than a normal person would ever open if they were not required
reading. I haven't seen one yet that didn't vector at least one of the
famous product name translation ULs--if not Nova, then Pepsi brings your
ancestors back from the dead or one of the many others.
Maggie "who are all these blind people studying for careers in marketing
and why?" Newman
Bo Bradham
Mark Kinney <albe...@iglou.com> wrote:
>Barbara Mikkelson (bmik...@best.com) wrote:
>: Often missed in this "bite the wax tadpole" legend is that it's always
>: passed along as *Coca-Cola* came up with this mistranslation, no other
>: explanation is entertained. As I understand various newspaper cites (one
>
>I've heard a similar story with Pepsi, actually, mistranslating "Come
>Alive With Pepsi" directly into "Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from
>the dead." So it's not just Coke. :-)
But that's different, I thought about that while writing my other post
in this thread. The Coke debacle (and the Chevy Nova one, only it isn't
true) is based on the fact that the name of the product means
something funny in the other language.
The Pepsi one as well as "Got Milk" deal with someone having done a
poor job of translating a slogan into another language. That
would be a lot easier to screw up, if you think about it.
Bo Bradham
Tony Pittarese
Maggie Newman <smne...@gsbkma.uchicago.edu> wrote in article
<EAE6t...@midway.uchicago.edu>...
I'm a college instructor of teaches Marketing and in the past have taught
International Business. In my office I have probably 100 Marketing and
International Business/Marketing texts. Just about every one of them has
both the Wax Tadpole, Nova, Chicken pregnancy and a few other similar
scenarios in them. I have 2 or 3 books that go on to "refute" the stories
and share the idea that _maybe_ there was a linguistic problem, but most of
the time it was a minor one overshadowed by other bigger problems.
It does make for nice, memorable examples of why American companies
shouldn't just translate their American campaigns and assume they'll even
come close to making sense abroad. Why such reputable authors as Czinkota,
Ball, Pride, Ferrel, Hill, and others play a bit fast and lose with the
truth in some of these situations in unknown. (Of course, most of them are
citing the same original documentation.)
--
Tony Pittarese
http://www.gulf.net/~tonypitt
Simon Slavin
In article <jaydbee.5...@primenet.nospam.com>,
jay...@primenet.nospam.com (she's baaaack....) wrote:
> In article <337d2c43...@news.zippo.com> m...@satlink.comSBLOCK (mig)
> writes:
>
> >The unusual structure of "Got milk?" in English makes it quite
> >impossible to translate directly, and it was foolish to try, if they
> >actually did. (Imagine "Do you have milk?" as a slogan. Oh yeah.)
>
> Perhaps in the UK.
There are few specific milk adverts in the UK at the moment. The
ones I remember best are related to a campain by the Milk
Marketing Board about twenty (?) years ago -- based around
"Drinka pinta milka day" and pushing the health-aspects of 'whole
pure' milk. There were others in the days when people got their
milk delivered each morning by milk-float -- including a bizarre
brand-image promotion apparently designed to scare young children:
"Watch out, there's a Humphrey about.", pushed with red and white
striped straws and promotion inside schools.
What we don't have is the USA facility with Spanish. A UKasian
is far more likely to remember some school-boy French than to
know any Spanish.
Simon.
--
Simon Slavin -- Computer Contractor. | "Do you really want to use the word
http://www.hearsay.demon.co.uk | 'braindead' in your mail to 'boss'?"
Check email address for spam-guard. | -- warning proposed by David Fetrow
Junk email not welcome at this site. | <fet...@biostat.washington.edu.NJ>
Drew Lawson
> In article <337d2c43...@news.zippo.com> m...@satlink.comSBLOCK
(mig) writes:
> >The unusual structure of "Got milk?" in English makes it quite
> >impossible to translate directly, and it was foolish to try, if they
> >actually did. (Imagine "Do you have milk?" as a slogan. Oh yeah.)
>
> Perhaps in the UK.
"Pardon me, but would you have any low fat milk?"
"But, of course."
--
Drew Lawson | We've got two lives
dla...@aimnet.com | one we're given
www.aimnet.com/~dlawson | and the other one we make