This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 66, Three False Friends Gone Bad in the Business World.
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How's it going, Aubrey, today? How are you?
I am great. How are you? Excited to be on the mic with you?
Yeah, of course, of course. And any exciting plans for the weekend?
Yes. My weekends these days are all about getting kids to sports events, softball, flag football, soccer.
So I'll be driving kids to games, which is fun.
At least it's cooling off a little, so it's not so miserable to be outside watching a soccer game.
I know. Guys, if you don't know where Aubrey lives, she lives in Arizona, which I feel may be the hottest state in the entire country.
Is that right? Could that be? It feels like it.
Yeah, for sure. So you're going to visit Arizona if you decide to go to the Grand Canyon, be prepared for very hot weather, probably no matter what time of year it is.
Exactly. Exactly. So guys, the cool thing about All Ears English is that you get to know each one of us, all members of our team.
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So Aubrey, what are we getting into today?
Yeah, this is going to be fun. We're talking about false friends, false cognates between languages and big mistakes that have been made if you're not aware of some of these.
So I want to ask you, Lindsay, first of all, can you think of a false cognate, a false friend, as we say in a language you speak?
Has there ever been maybe something embarrassing that's happened?
Well, more of the embarrassing kind of mistakes I've made were more that I pronounced something wrong and it just ended up being something else.
You know what I mean? Like there's slight differences in translations.
Like in Japanese, kawaii means crazy and kawaii means cute.
So little things like that where you end up saying crazy or cute.
I don't know. It's more pronunciation. But yeah, I'm sure if I could take some time, I would find one.
Absolutely. There's a funny one. I mean, there's so many between French and English and Spanish and English, but one of them is the word envy, which means sort of to be jealous of someone in English.
The word envie, which looks very similar in French, means you want something like j'ai envie de means, oh, I want that.
So if you accidentally say, oh, I envy you.
In French, you're saying, I want you. So that could be a big mistake.
You want to avoid that one. That's hilarious.
See, these things are just, they're humbling when we make these mistakes.
It's so funny. But, you know, it's not so humbling.
It's actually shocking and kind of devastating when companies make these mistakes, right?
Because companies have huge budgets and they shouldn't be making these mistakes.
Right. Especially if it's in like print marketing, print advertising or something that clients see.
Right. This is when the stakes are much higher. with business English that we have to really make sure to avoid incorrect use of idioms or incorrect use of these false friends.
Oh, for sure. Especially when your company has spent a million dollars on a huge billboard in Times Square or something or wherever.
And it's just a really awful translation.
You know, to be honest, when I was living in Japan, I saw a lot of this, a lot of really, really bad.
And I'm not sure why or how it happens. But But there's a lot of bad translations from Japanese into English in Japan.
And you wonder if it's maybe the level of language of the translator or if they're using AI translation.
Google Translate, as you guys I'm sure have found out, if you're translating directly like that, it often is wrong because it loses all of that hidden meaning in idiomatic language.
Oh, it's so true. When I was living in Tokyo, I was keeping a blog.
I'll have to see if I can go find that because there was some really funny stuff that every day I would find weird, weird, weird translations.
So we got to be careful. The point is we cannot translate our idioms directly.
You just can't do it because culture is a major part of idioms.
Right, Aubrey? I mean, culture is embedded in an idiom.
Exactly. Right. That's why a lot of our episodes we do teach idioms and we always make sure to share them in context to let you know how we use them, share them with role plays, because it's not enough just to learn an idiom.
You have to use it word for word exactly and in the right context.
It's just so easy to totally change the meaning if you don't.
It's so true. It's so true. So we're going to give you guys some examples.
You know exactly what we're talking about.
You could see what companies have done. So maybe you don't feel so bad if you've made similar mistakes.
I mean, these companies made mega money mistakes, right?
So this first company, so Coors, you know, Coors is a beer company.
Actually, I think Coors is based in Colorado.
Um, they, their slogan, I guess, is turn it loose, right?
But they put it into Spanish. And what did it appear as in Spanish when they directly translated it?
Yeah, right. So in English, this means to just relax, you know, you know, let loose.
But in Spanish, it means to suffer from diarrhea.
So that's not something you want associated with your company.
Especially a beer company. No one's going to buy a beer that they think is going to cause diarrhea.
And I wonder what happened. I mean, when did they realize it?
How much investment did they make? I'd like to know the details here.
I would too, right? Did they have giant billboards or ad marketing campaigns?
And then suddenly the Spanish speakers are letting them know, oh, this does not mean what you think it means.
Yeah. This does not translate well. Right.
Who's responsible for that? Oh, man. I think that person might have gotten fired.
So, all right. What's another one? What's another example?
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Exclusions apply. See details online. So this there's a chicken restaurant company in the United States that their Logan is finger licking good.
So it means like if you lick your ears, it's so delicious.
You want to lick your fingers, right? Just means super delicious.
But in Chinese, if you translate this directly, it means to actually eat your fingers off.
And I don't know what that even means. I mean, who eats their fingers?
That's crazy. But that must be some other.
Yeah, it's just a weird translation. It just doesn't work.
Yeah, one of these, if you're directly translating it, right, this is probably what Google would give you.
And it loses all that idiomatic meaning there.
And it's a direct translation, which would be very confusing and strange.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everyone, that's why it has to be cultural.
Everyone knows the slogan for this chicken company, finger licking good.
And right. We know it. We know what it means.
It's embedded deeply into our culture. We've heard it on TV since we were kids.
So if you are, if you, first of all, if you work in international marketing, you got to figure out what that slogan is for people in China, right?
We've got to do this for each country. It just doesn't translate.
Exactly. And that might not be the easiest.
You would definitely need a native speaker to give you some insight.
Oh my gosh. I'm like, what's the equivalent here if just something is extremely delicious?
And because it's going to probably be totally unrelated to licking your fingers.
It's going to have to be something very different.
Yeah, I think this would be a really cool job to work in this kind of international marketing translation world where you're helping to make sure that slogans get translated properly into different cultures and languages.
Wouldn't that be cool? It would be interesting and be able to have a lot of really interesting cross-cultural experiences.
I would love that job, too. I think that'd be fun.
And I like proofreading, copy editing. I think it's fun, you know, and for someone who's pretty detail oriented, it's a fun job.
Oh, interesting. So when you were living in, in where you live?
No, not France. I've lived in Belgium. Sorry, why did I think Austria?
Belgium? Yeah, I keep asking you that. I keep forgetting.
Sorry. When you lived in Belgium, did you go to McDonald's?
Did you try the McDonald's menu is my question.
The only time I went to a McDonald's when I was traveling in Europe was to use the bathroom.
It was like when you're out in public, there were restrooms that you would pay to go to.
And then McDonald's, you could just go in and use the bathroom and you were probably supposed to purchase something.
But I had no interest in I've never really liked McDonald's food.
So I would just go straight to the bathroom.
Ah, interesting. Okay. Okay. Cool. Cool.
Cool. I tried to avoid McDonald's too. In general, I never go to McDonald's here.
I just hate, I just feel awful if I eat there.
But in Japan, I did go once as kind of an event with friends because we said, we're going to try McDonald's Japan and see what's on the menu.
And obviously I think I had like a shrimp burger or something.
There's a lot of fish, a lot of seafood.
Everything was smaller, of course. But it was fun.
I think that's kind of a fun thing to do.
Try these fast food restaurants, not because you want to eat there, but just because you want to see what's on the menu and how they interpret the McDonald's business model.
Yeah, for sure. And to see what different things are called.
It's definitely different in the States.
It reminds me of there's a scene in Pulp Fiction where they're talking about the quarter pounder and they say it's translated in French. in french-speaking countries as a royale with cheese and they just think that's so funny you know and it's because it's going to be different because if you don't use you know if you use the metric system a quarter pound means nothing to you you can't translate that directly right so i wonder because you know how these companies like mcdonald's they have their famous products right like the quarter pounder the big mac is what comes to mind i wonder if they have translated the big mac into another name similar to the royale right and then if that becomes a brand in itself and how that I do remember looking at the menu board and it, you know, the things not translating directly.
I can't remember exactly what they were, but it was different.
Anyone who, if you've been to McDonald's in your home country and you travel to any other country, that would be a fun thing to see.
Be like, ooh, how is this different? You don't have to eat the food if you go to use the bathroom.
And just to see the differences. Yeah. Wouldn't this be a really fun, I don't know, discussion on social media?
Guys, we're on all the socials, by the way.
Aubrey, where are we on the socials? We're at All over the place.
Everywhere. Instagram, YouTube shorts we do.
Indeed, TikTok, WeChat in China, right? Bilibili in China.
So wherever you find your social media, look up All Ears English.
We post a lot of really fun content with vocabulary and idioms and how to use them in your everyday life.
Interesting. Yeah. Maybe sometime we'll do like one designated day where everyone should go to McDonald's in their own country and bring back like photos of the wrapping or the menu and we could talk about our experiences.
I would love that. That would be awesome.
That would be awesome. Maybe we'll keep that idea in mind for the future.
Very cool. All right, Aubrey. Well, thanks for hanging out today.
This has been a really good topic. And guys, hit follow on the podcast so you don't miss All Ears English.
Yes. Awesome. See you next time. All right.
Take care. Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.
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