History is full with product failures due to a poor choice of brand name or slogan. Often companies fail to fully investigate what a certain slogan or product means in another language and the impact this can have on their business.

In Taiwan Pepsi’s slogan ‘Come alive with the Pepsi generation’ was translated as ‘Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead’.

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 General Motors introduced the Chevy Nova in South America, it was apparently unaware that "nova" means "it won't go." After the company figured out why it wasn't selling any cars, it renamed the car in its Spanish markets to the Caribe.

Ford had a similar problem in Brazil when the Pinto flopped. The company found out that Pinto was Brazilian slang for "tiny male genitals". Ford pried all the nameplates off and substituted Corcel, which means horse.

Toyota’s Fiera car did not take off as expected in Puerto Rico, where ‘fiera’ translates to ‘ugly old woman’.