frauke at large

Seriously!? This is your brand name? … do Chinese businesses realise that their made up brand names are strangely hilarious to foreigners? Don’t they care about meaning in a blind race to signal international-ness? If these brand names really are all their own doing why don’t they ask some professional marketer for help to avoid being the laughingstock of us laowai? Or maybe they have and some foreign consultant has just been incredibly obnoxious? Who knows, but the debate on that one has been going on ever since I arrived in China …

I have so far resisted writing about the wonderful world that is screwed up mistranslations from Chinese into English (also dubbed chinglish), as well as hilarious ‘foreign’ brand names ‘invented’ by Chinese companies to portray themselves as ‘international’ to their domestic customers. However, whilst on my latest trip around China I was bombarded with so many funny brand names, that I can no longer fight it: the time has come to dig out all those pictures, remember those laugh out loud moments and share the hilarity of those brand names that amuse us whilst walking the streets of China.

 

My personal favourite, found in Xi’An: Arschkoerl – selling men’s clothing for 20 to 35 year old chavs. It’s probably only funny for Germans – a rough translation into English being: arse, idiot, … you get the gist. Well, I guess despite having picked an unfortunate name for Germans, they may have matched the brand name perfectly to their target audience!? …

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