Nissan Bluebird
Nissan’s Bluebird (sedan) is translated as Lan-Niao in Chinese. In Mandarin, lan means blue and niao means bird – no problem. However, the reading of the characters for lan niao in the Minnan (Hokkien-Taiwanese) is lan jiao, which also sounds like the word for male genitals. It’s rather complicated, but although blue in Minnan is lan and bird is jiao, the term lan jiao is bad, to put it mildly.
A better translation might be Qing Niao. Qing is another character for blue. Qing-niao distracts Minnan speakers from the negative association and is also more poetic. The word qing-niao appeared in a famous Untitled poem by Li Shang-yin (813-858), a Tang Dynasty poet. It also refers to a legendary messenger in Chinese mythology who served the goddess Queen Mother of the West. “The messenger” is in our opinion a better association for a car than the male genitals.
Translated coined names are not the only ones that need to be carefully examined for linguistic and culture appropriateness. Even “simple words” can create big problems when overlooked.
Posted: April 1st, 2004 under Danger, Cars.
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