🚀 go-pugleaf

As part of a book I'm working on for Springer-Verlag, I would like
to collect some amusing anecdotes about companies that have tried
to market their product, be it computer software/hardware, or even
food or clothing, but failed due to a lack of understanding of the
foreign marketplace.

Examples are the story of Chevy finding that the "Nova" didn't sell
very well in Mexico; nova means "doesn't go" in Spanish.  Coke also
committed a similar faux pas when they cracked the Chinese market
for their soda; they choose Chinese ideograms that 'looked like
the "coca cola" letters and ended up with a soda whose name actually
was something like "the drink to die consuming".  

I also recall hearing a story about the Mac trashcan icon and what
the locals took it for in Italy, but unfortunately I can't find
any more specific traces in my head on that one...

I will credit all submissions, and would ideally like a reference
with your submission, but pure anecdotal stories are fine too.  If
anyone knows of any sources I can dig up in a library or on an online
service or similar, I would be absolutely delighted to hear about it!
(perhaps the Harvard Business School library, for example?)

The book, by the way, is on "Creating International Software" and is
a logical followon to my chapter "Real Life Experiences Internation-
alizating Software" for the only just released Elsevier book "Designing 
User Interfaces for International Use", edited by Dr. Jakob Neilsen.

Thanks greatly for any assistance!  Please respond via email rather
than follow up articles, too!

					Sincerely,

						-- Dave Taylor
Intuitive Systems
Mountain View, California

taylor@limbo.intuitive.com    or   {uunet!}{decwrl,apple}!limbo!taylor