Translation is a tricky thing, and firms often get it wrong.
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Translate something too vaguely, and the meaning is lost. If you’ve ever watched You are the one, you’ll understand.
Apple is having a bit of a hard time with the new iPhone 7. So the literal translation of the iPhone 7’s slogan turns out to be “This is Penis”. Mainlanders and Taiwanese speak Mandarin. This can lead to many opportunities for double entendre and word play.
Well, the U.S. site Quartz explains that in Hong Kong, “seven”, or “柒”, is pronounced “chat”, and is also slang for “penis”.
Surprisingly though, the colloquial term isn’t very offensive, more an amusing slant.
Apparently Hong Kong’s tech-enthusiasts are enjoying the joke.
Cantonese is the spoken language in Hong Kong.
Samsung reportedly came in for some of the same teasing in Hong Kong after the release of its Galaxy Note 7. One person, clearly unhappy with Apple’s recent show of “courage”, commented that “without a 3.5mm jack, this is exactly penis”.
A number of cantonese smartphone users took to social media mocking Apples’s mistake, according to Quartz. That’s why “This is penis” or “Penis, is here” or “Exactly is penis” were not great choices for Apple’s Hong Kong marketing push.
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When you are a global company, coming up with a slogan that works in all regions must be tough. However, perhaps Apple should look on the bright side. With two high performance and two high efficiency cores (the latter accounting for a longer battery life), the handset also has a 6-core GPU which is 50% faster than the Apple A9 processor.
