This document discusses challenges with global content management and localization. It provides examples of product names and slogans that were poorly translated, such as "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Grave." The document advocates for centralized authoring tools and resources to promote consistent terminology and styles across languages in order to improve translation quality and avoid issues that can damage brands.

1. 24 Ways To Shut Down The Application (and 101 other apocryphal stories) David Ashton VP Global Information Management Solutions SDL International

4. When the Wheels Fall Off the Bus… Famous Examples of Bad Translations © 2007 SDL International. Company Confidential. Forward-looking information is based upon multiple assumptions and uncertainties and does not necessarily represent the company’s outlook.

5. Coca Cola The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-ke-ken-la . Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means " bite the wax tadpole " or " female horse stuffed with wax " depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, " ko-kou-ko-le ," which can be loosely translated as " happiness in the mouth ."

6. Pepsi Pepsi's "Come Alive With the Pepsi Generation" translated into Chinese turned into… "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back From the Grave"

7. Got Milk? The Dairy Association's huge success with the campaign "Got Milk?" prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico. It was soon brought to their attention the Spanish translation read "Are You Lactating?"

8. Gerber Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the labels of what's inside, since many people can't read. When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the smiling baby on the label. To add insult to injury, the word “ Gerber” is also the French word for vomiting.

11. Why it is this way. Content Content Content Content

17. Global Authoring Management Central server-based access for enterprise-wide consistency

18. AuthorAssistant