#168 Does Nike want you to get fat?
Bad translations have long been the humor well that keeps on giving in International Business. Just think of German car maker Audi’s relatively recent rollout of the E-tron (French for excrement) brand for their electric cars. Nike is certainly no stranger to translation issues as it has blundered among Arabic speakers and devout muslims as early as 1997 and as recent as 2019 when their Air shoe seemed to display the name for God in Arabic (“Allah”). In 2016, Nike stepped into it again, this time in China. Trying to capitalize on Chinese consumers’ desire to shop until they drop around Chinese New Year, they marketed a Nike Air Force 1 athletic shoe with something they thought showed the Chinese characters conveying New Year’s blessings, using the Chinese words “Fa” and “Fu”. And indeed, when shown separately, these words mean “wealthy or prosperous” and “luck or good fortune” and are used to congratulate others on the happy occasion of the New Year. However, when written together as “Fa Fu”, then their meaning is entirely different – GETTING FAT, which is kind of ironic for a company selling athletic wear. One wonders, how can a multinational company of the size, importance, and professionalism such as Nike not prevent these kinds of mistakes?
June 30, 2022 @ 6:54 pm
Since this is not the first time that Nike had translation issues with a foreign language sign at all, I really wonder how this is even possible? One should think that in such a huge and globally active company things like that cannot happen at all, but they still appear. But something that left me kind of suspicious is the fact, that this has happened before. So probably Nike did this on purpose, maybe to get attention for their latest shoe according to a translation issue which could be a marketing gag since the meaning is kind of sarcastic. Otherwise, it could also be that the design team for that shoe has not done their research good enough to really dig into the Chinese writing signs to be aware of that. At the end we are all human beings and we do make mistakes, as long as it is about sarcasm and irony.