The text below is divided into Part I and Part II

Part I

Lost In Translation: Language Blunders Can Sully Ad Efforts

Even Small Mistakes Can Cost Marketers Sales And Confidence; Want Fries With That Underwear?

Message to marketers: One man's pizza may be another man's pants.

That is a lesson at least one U.S. advertiser would like to have known before trying to market his folded-over pizza, called a calzone, to Spanish speakers: To them, calzone means underwear. The poor translation was one example on a list of botched advertising and branding efforts cited in a recent national survey of people who speak English as a second language.

Of the 513 people surveyed, 57% said they had spotted advertising that was incorrectly translated from English into other lan-guages. Though the blunders are often humorous, they can cost the advertiser sales, suggested the survey, conducted by New York based translation service TransPerfect Translations Inc. Close to 50% of respondents said they simply tune out the message if an ad is poorly translated, and about 65% interpret bad translations as evidence that the advertiser doesn't care about the consumer. Even small mistakes, such as advertising a store where everything costs a dollar as "Un Dollar," rather than the correct Spanish "Un Dolar," was enough to put off potential customers, the survey found.