Discussion question 6

Before talking about my funny urban legend I wanted to ask a question...The other day I was parking my car at my office garage and as I was walking to the elevators I saw something I hated!!! Maybe this was a controversy some time ago but honestly is the first time I see it... I saw a car...Dodge and the name of the model was Magnum!!! I hated totally hated it!!! it's funny because we all know what magnum is and the car is a vivid representation of it ew! lol its huge and long... I wanted to ask what you guys think about it because I honestly hated it! I think that is such an inappropriate name for a car! no? am I being tooo conservative here??



Anyways! my urban legend is similar to this story, the same topic I think. In 1971 Ford introduced a new car called the Ford Pinto (it lasted until 1980), the car had a lot of problems itself and Ford got in a lot of trouble mainly because the car tended to erupt in flame in rear-end collisions. Besides all the manufacturing problems the car had in America, sales didn't do well in Brazil either... why? because Pinto is Brazilian slang for "small male genitals", after causing a marketing disaster on this country, the company had to rename and completely rebadge all the cars with a the new name: the Corcel, which means horse or steed.
This problem is not a myth, it really happened.


I also found this interesting International/Intercultural mistakes:
Nova = “no go”
Pinto = “small genitals”
Puffs = “homosexuals”
Mist Stick = “manure stick”
Got Milk = “are you lactating?”

Sources
http://www.i18nguy.com/translations.html
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1658545_1658498_1657866,00.html
http://www.localizationworks.com/cgi/doc.cgi?fauxpas.html