Top 9 Poetic Translations Of Foreign Brand Names In Chinese

The "land of 1 billion customers" is also the land of surprisingly descriptive and sometimes even poetic brand names.

1. Coke: "Allow Happiness in the Mouth" 可口可乐

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Perhaps the most successful translation of a western product, "ke kou ke le" manages to achieve a memorable sound and capture the product. Of course, happiness in the mouth could be the result of many other products/experiences besides drinking Coke. But that's for your imagination...

2. BMW: "Precious Horse" 宝马

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BMWs emit slightly more CO2 then "precious horses" would, but it's a nice sounding name nonetheless.

3. McDonalds: "Wheat Serves as Labor" 麦当劳

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McDonalds...coming to an idyllic Chinese landscape painting near you!

Some brands, like McDonalds ( mai-dang-lao ), opted for a phonetic translation of their name into Chinese, without much thought on the actual meaning. But the name manages to evoke a sort of Proletarian spirit in eating hamburgers.

4. Subway: "Surpassing 100 Flavors" 赛百味

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Mao Zedong once called for dissident intellectuals to air their ideas, declaring "let 100 flowers bloom". Subway Sandwiches took up that theme with their evocative Chinese translation. Needless to say, the sandwiches have fared better than the intellectuals.

5. Nestle: "Sparrow's Nest" 雀巢

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Literally translating the company's birds-nest logo, sparrow's nest, or que-chao . Sparrows were once targeted in a 1958 "campaign against the 4 pests" in the countryside. It seems they've made a comeback since then.

6. Jissbon Condoms: ”Outstanding Bachelor Nation" 杰士邦

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Condoms: helping maintain a nation of outstanding bachelors since 1855. Apparently the brand's name jie-shi-bang was also supposed to connote James Bond, since the last two characters shi-bang are used for James Bond in Chinese.

7. Lays: "Happy Things" 乐事

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This guy is happy to have a bag of happy things, or le-shi

8. Google "Valley Song" 谷歌

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Despite its public pullout from mainland China in 2010 after refusing to censor its web searches on the Chinese site, Google or gu-ge is still the 2nd most popular search engine after Chinese baidu.com and operates a Hong-Kong based Chinese site. And as this picture shows, it's still quite popular in the mainland.

9. Marriot: ”10,000 People of Extraordinary Power" 万豪

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wan-hao means something nice like "1000 elites", although staying at a Marriott might not be as empowering of an experience as the name suggests.