The Pen that Couldn’t Reproduce. Even When it Tried.
This isn’t a promotional pen; just a promotion for a pen… that went terribly awry (as so many translations do!).
A Mexican pen company, Parker Pen was looking to start a new ad campaign. Unfortunately they had a foreign ad team (or just some college kids making a joke, I’m not quite sure) and pretty soon they were apologizing for a pretty interesting slogan.
Instead of the intended “it won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you,” the company mixed up the verb “embarazer” and declared loud and proud- “It won’t leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.”
Because when buying ball-point pens, this is definitely my largest concern.
Tags: parker pen, translation
October 28th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
In truth, immediately i didn’t understand the essence. But after re-reading all at once became clear.
November 21st, 2009 at 8:09 pm
This kind of thing happens far too often. One example I remember is Schweppes tonic water getting released in Italy as Schwepps toilet water!
November 24th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Haha, I’ve never heard of that one before!