Ever since I began having health problems, I have learned to read food labels carefully. But admittedly I have not been careful enough, I discovered. My concentration has been on sodium content, saturated fats, etc. — all health concerns.

After buying a box of crackers that fit my health concerns, I should have read the small item at the bottom of the box: “Made in Brazil.”

I would have probably consumed the entire box without ever seeing that, if my wife hadn't studied it one day and started laughing.

She was reading a recipe on the side of the box for a sweet and sour paté. The instructions said: “Place the finely chopped onion in a pan with bowling water for approximately 1 minute.” Honest, folks, it said “bowling” water, not boiling water.

Studying the box more closely, I finally found the wording “Origen Brazil.”

I guess I had better read more than just the nutritional information in the global economy we have today. To be honest, the crackers, without the “bowling” water in the recipe for paté, were excellent to the taste.

That incident caused me to do some research on the wave of companies that try to translate product slogans from English into a foreign language. Some of the attempts are hilarious. Here are some “bowling water” samples:

The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means “bite the wax tadpole” or “female horse stuffed with wax,” depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, “ko-kou-ko-le,” which can be loosely translated as “happiness in the mouth.”

In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” translated, “Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead.”

Also in Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan “finger-lickin' good” came out as “eat your fingers off.”

When Parker Pen marketed a ballpoint pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to say, “It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you.” However, the company mistakenly thought the Spanish word “embarazar” meant embarrass. Instead the ads said that, “It won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.”

Chicken-man Frank Perdue's slogan, “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken,” got terribly mangled in another Spanish translation. A photo of Perdue with one of his birds appeared on billboards all over Mexico with a caption that explained “It takes a hard man to make a chicken aroused.”

Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an ad campaign: “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.”

The American slogan for Salem cigarettes, “Salem — Feeling Free,” got translated in the Japanese market into “When smoking Salem, you feel so refreshed that your mind seems to be free and empty.”

When General Motors introduced the Chevy Nova in South America, it was apparently unaware that “no va” means “it won't go.” After the company figured out why it wasn't selling any cars, it renamed the car in its Spanish markets to the Caribe.

Ford had a similar problem in Brazil when the Pinto flopped. The company found out that Pinto was Brazilian slang for “tiny male genitals.” Ford pried all the nameplates off and substituted Corcel, which means “horse.”

An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market to promote the Pope's visit. Instead of the desired “I Saw the Pope” in Spanish, the shirts proclaimed “I Saw the Potato.”

Hunt-Wesson introduced its Big John products in French Canada as Gros Jos before finding out that, in slang, the phrase means “big breasts.” In this case, however, the name problem did not have a noticeable effect on sales.

Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine.

In Italy, a campaign for Schweppes Tonic Water translated the name into Schweppes Toilet Water. Maybe they should have bowled it.

Not only are the bloopers found in attempts at translating English into other languages, but one of the funniest newspaper ads is one from Burger King that said: “It takes many ingredients to make a Burger King. The secret ingredient is our people.”

Oh, well, language foibles can reach the highest ranks, to wit John F. Kennedy's famous gaffe when he tried to align America with then-West Germany and said: ”Ich bin ein Berliner.” When translated he said “I am a jelly doughnut.”

I think I'll go bowl myself some onions for my Brazilian crackers.

Bill Duncan can be reached at bduncan@nrtoday.com by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470.