Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is a popular company that had had many successes and failures in new markets. One of the actual causes of failure in a new market due to language happened in the 1920s. The company had come into China, and translated its brand name to Ke-Kou-ke-la to maintain the phonetics of the name “Coca Cola” in the Chinese language. In Chinese, Ke-Kou-ke-la translated “bite the wax tadpole.” The phrase was obviously disastrous; and making the matter worse, and the company had already printed thousands of posters before noticing the translation. Coca-Cola researched the Chinese characters and came up with a more appropriate phrase – K’o K’ou K’o Lê. Although it does not exactly sound like Coca-Cola, it meant “to permit mouth to be able to rejoice,” which is much better. The company has thus maintained the brand name Coca-Cola without translations to avoid language-related challenges.
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I have interviewed my neighbor regarding the differences in their first language (Japanese) and English. Although she can speak English almost fluently, there are several challenges that she has noted. First, her native Japanese language has more words than English. As such, there are English words or expressions she cannot find precisely or are not available. Secondly, she has challenge with the phonetics of the English language. Some vowel pairs are challenging to pronounce, such as hut and hat, and saying the (/θ/ /ð/) sounds is difficult. However, she is comfortable that tenses in the English language follow almost similar rules as Japanese. She also hints that speaking English to a fellow Japanese is much easier than people whose English is their first language. Fellow Japanese do not judge her phonetics and grammar compared to them latter.