Coca Cola Lost in Translation- Translation Mistake

The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-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.”

When taking your product or service global be sure to not only translate the words but also their meaning in the local market - otherwise all the work you have done to enter the new market may be a disaster.