Monday 8 December 2014

Lost In translation. Or just lost?

I did a small amount of shopping recently at an international store here in Madrid - they sell foodstuffs from India, China, the Phillipines, South America, and a bit of Brit stuff. I was rewarded for my efforts by a free can of this:
I still haven't plucked up the courage to actually open the can and try it. Quite possibly I never will.

You really do have to wonder what inspires people to name things the way they do. Take this shop on Calle Atocha in Madrid.
'Yuck' has no meaning in Spanish, and there's nothing special about it at all. It's just an 'alimentaciĆ³n' - it sells mostly food in cans that you only buy if you are desperate (so maybe the name isn't totally inappropriate after all).

I think my all time favourite silly name for a product is this one: Pocari Sweat.
It caused great hilarity when its Korean manufacturers launched it into the Middle East market. To my knowledge, nobody has ever found out what a Pocari is, nor, indeed, how you would collect its sweat.

But speaking of hilarity, what on earth possessed these manufacturers to adopt it as a brand name?

No comments :

Post a Comment