How this confusing translation led to a ‘heated’ argument

In the world of languages, translation services and professional translation agencies there is always going to be some difficulties as are the complexities of languages. For every one flawless translation example there is most likely going to be a few erroneous, problematic and mistake riddled translations. These you would usually find are DIY, google translated types of translations which are completely fine when it’s not for professional use for say any business or organisation of any reputation because these mistakes will have an inevitable effect on how clients or potential clients will view your professional image and operations.

We have already shown you how a bad translations has negatively affected a company such as Tesla here, however on the other hand we have also shown you some terrible examples of Mandarin translation services to hilarious effect here. But very rarely these translation fails could have such a comedic effect that it becomes viral and is reported around the world, which in turn could actually help boost a business/organisations audience to reach more people more than anything else.

This is exactly what happened in Japan recently in an episode of localisation services gone wrong as reported by twitter user Domoboku whose real name is Akiyama Kojiro from Tokyo. It all started in a Japanese convenience store when a non-native man took a bottle of lemon iced tea off the shelf and started to drink it without paying; as you can imagine this resulted in a heated argument between the man and the shop’s cashier, with neither speaking the same language before Kojiro intervened.

You will probably be thinking the shopper was in the wrong but in his defence he was not to blame but rather the miscalculated Japanese to English translated brand name on the bottle. The reason why the man was not to blame was because the drink which is produced by Pokka Sapporo had in clear English words ‘FREE Tea’ on the bottle, (See image below) other than that everything else was Japanese. It turns out that this is just the brand name and not an offer, which according to Kojiro anyone could easily confuse as given the amount of freebies you receive in Japan. A quick look on the website explains that the drink “encourages people to be free from a stress-filled society,” hence the name.

Kojiro’s account on this ironic incident has seen his post attract over 34k retweets and more than 19k likes, leading to a discussion of people sharing their own translation fail stories. A lesson for everyone to take from this is whether you need English, French, Spanish or Hebrew translation services make sure it’s done professionally and localised too or if you are going to make a mistake, make it so funny and bizarre that it leads to a viral sensation to reach a massive population.