Comments on: Transliterated brand names

By: Name me Dan

Name me Dan — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 20:09:20 +0000

A good service to understand a name on a global level is http://www.globalnaming.com. It lets you verify the name to eliminate bad words in most langugaes, decompose the name, thesaurus etc. Have a look.

By: Ingrid Piller

Ingrid Piller — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:21:33 +0000

Thanks, Karin! The NYT recently had a fascinating article about brand names in China, too: Picking Brand Names in China is a Business Itself. In other global brand names new, a German company recently won the right to name a beer 'Fucking Hell,' after the name of the town of Fucking in Austria: see German Firm Wins Right to Make Beer Called 'Fucking Hell' (Spiegel)

By: Karin

Karin — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 18:14:07 +0000

Hi Ingrid, just came across your post so my comment is a little late but the transliteration of Coca-Cola into chinese is propably the most successfull transliteration of a brand name I have come across, they manaed to transliterate the brand name into chinese characters which carry positive meaning and and when read out loud actually sounds like -Coca-Cola : see http://www.scribd.com/doc/40403405/The-Transliteration-of-Coca-Cola-in-Chinese-case-Study

All the best

By: Katia

Katia — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 11:55:17 +0000

I just noticed that no one proposed such a reason for transliteration as prestige.. Especially with that Cairo Smart. As I moved from the one non-Western place (former USSR) to live in another one (Poland), its obvious for me that every nice word (preferable English, French (if its fashion) or Italian (cuisine) or German (automotive)) can find its honorable place because of prestige! Poland uses Latin letters (though not everyone is able to read properly eg Peugeot, Carrefourt etc) but still demonstrates inferiority by adopting lots and lots of foreign words. The same happens in Cyrillic region, where one can speak almost only using adopted (transliterated) words (so called novoyaz – new language), where ads (especially those for elites) are full of loanwords unclear for Tolstoy readers…
As to Egipt, I remember the nicest experience I had there was at the bazaar, where a guy foisted on me a great t-shirt with big dior on it, and was hugely surprised when I refused:)!

By: Naming Articles | The Scarcliff Directory of Branding

Naming Articles | The Scarcliff Directory of Branding — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 14:41:48 +0000

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