The tale of the Chevy Nova is a fairly common thread on the internet. The compact car enjoyed a fair amount of success stateside in the 60s and 70s. However, as the urban legend goes, sales were hurt abroad in Spanish speaking countries because the car's name can easily be read as No va, which translates to "doesn't go" in Spanish. The theory that sales were actually affected has mostly been debunked. Still, it remains a great example of why it's important to cross check advertisement strategies before rolling a product out the door.

With companies marketing products across the globe in dozens of languages, where can people turn to make sure their awesome and catchy product title doesn't translate into something ridiculous in a foreign tongue? I ran across a report on a small company called Choice Translating, which helps save huge corporations from big embarrassments. Basically, the company has a crack team of linguists on staff who help translate product titles into a multitude of languages to make sure they don't mean something inappropriate or offensive.

For example, a large U.S. based pharmaceutical company wanted to call a new weight-loss pill "Tegro." But spoken phonetically in French, it becomes t'es gros, or "you're fat." Anyway, it's a cool report on an even cooler company. So as an entrepreneur, if you're ever set on going global, it might be a smart move to give these guys a call.

-- Peter