Because of that whole climate change thing car manufacturers have been putting a lot of effort into developing electric and hybrid vehicles. Audi, naturally were doing this and recently unveiled their impressive new all electric vehicle. The Audi e-tron is an all battery powered vehicle with a whopping 3,319 lb-ft of torque. It is limited to 120mph in order to conserve battery life, and it also looks the business. Just don’t expect to see very many of these driving around in France.
Audi e-tron
The reason that Audi will encounter difficulties marketing the e-tron to their Gallic cousins is not that they prefer broken down old 2CVs but the meaning of of the cars name in the French language. The French have a word ‘étron’, it means, well it means ‘turd’ not to put too fine a point on it. With that marketing fail the brand image for Audi’s new eco-flagship went from green to brown in a major European market.
The problem of names sounding like something rude in a foreign tongue is not restricted to cars and other manufactured products. In those cases you are left thinking “surely someone could have checked that”, spare a thought then for people who’s actual names translate into something rude.
Akbar Zeb was a successful Pakistani diplomat. His star was very much on the rise with the service, so much so that it was decided that he should be appointed the prestigious role of ambassador to Saudi Arabia. The spanner in the works? The Arabic language. In Arabic ‘zeb’ is a rude slang term for the male generative organ, and ‘akbar’ means ‘the biggest’ – or dear… needless to say it was decided that this would not fly in Saudi, and Mr. Zeb did not get the job. Harsh!
