My current stay in Barcelona is great. I’ve been enjoying the sunshine, mixing with the locals, and working hard to improve my knowledge of the local language: Catalan. Catalan is the co-official language in the Catalan (North-East region of Spain, covering the Barcelona, Valencia, the South-West of France, Andorra, the Balaeric Islands and parts of Sardinia). Catalonia has its own culture, history, food, identity and (of course) language.
Last night another failure in the world of translation was brought to my attention. KFC localised their advertising campaign for this region, but with it made some massive spelling mistakes. This campaign was in all their shop windows, on the sides of buses, there are even spelling mistakes on the signage inside the stores! The text which is meant to read:
“It’s not bread and tomato [a local dish], but I am also rich”
has badly misspelt the word tomato [tumaco instead of tomàquet], and has used the word for rich to mean lots of money, instead of rich in flavour. Last month the local newspaper announced the campaign will to be stopped and the signs will be removed.
But at what cost? KFC probably spent millions of Euros on something that has become an embarrassment, and has likely lost them customers in this region. If they had increased their translation/localisation budget from the start and hired a suitably qualified translator, this mistake could have been avoided.
See the Vanguardia newspaper article here