Localisation Faux Pas (Archive)

When the Pope visited Miami some years ago, an ambitious American entrepreneur wanted to sell T-shirts with the logo "I saw the Pope" printed in Spanish. A good idea, but unfortunately he forgot that the definite article in Spanish has two genders. The result was that, instead of printing "El Papa" ("the Pope") on the T-Shirts, he printed "La Papa", which actually means "the potato". 

Needless to say, there was not much of a market in Miami (or elsewhere) for T-Shirts which read "I saw the potato".

(Adapted from: Industry Week.Com: "Bite The Wax Tadpole" by Terri Morrison and Wayne A. Cona - http://www.industryweek.com/Columns/ASP/columns.asp?ColumnId=400)