http://www.i18nguy.com/translations.html

1. In Italy "sega" is the unofficial but most popular name for the act of male masturbation. So, the popular videogame makers SEGA Enterprises, attempting to disassociate SEGA from sega, changed the pronunciation to "see-ga" in their ads, as if to educate Italians about proper English (or Japanese?) pronunciation.

Many Italians are surprised to learn that SEGA is not pronounced see-ga, but say-ga, outside of Italy.
Also alleged, is that when the SEGA-sponsored Arsenal Gunners soccer team was to play the Italian Fiorentina team for the Championship (circa 1999), the Arsenals argued to play the game in the U.K. Apparently, their away flag displays the sponsor prominently and it might inspire, er I mean offend the Italian TV audience.

2. Volkswagen named the sedan version of Golf the Jetta. However, the letter "J" doesn't exist in the Italian alphabet, so Jetta is pronounced "Ietta", which means Misfortune...
Thanks to Alberto Malin.
Omanko writes: It's true... the letter J don't exist in the Italian alphabet but it is in use a long time. (e.g. There is also an old city called Jesi and Italian names like Jacopo...). The word ietta don't exist in Italian but Jella exists (yes, you write it with the letter J!) and there are two or three words derived from this one, e.g. jettatore/iettatore (evil-eyed man) or jettatura/iettatura (bad luck). In neapolitan dialect Jetta means throw, throw away!!!
Jetta has good sales in Italy.

2003-12-23 OK, I received a few confusing if not conflicting mails on this, so I spoke with New England's Italian language translation expert, Laura Bergamini: 'The answer from Omanko is correct. Jetta by itself does not mean anything, nor is it associated with "bad luck" as "jella" is. It is part of words like "jettatore".
'Additionally, ever since it was introduced, the car was marketed with the English pronunciation of "J" so it IS called "jay-tta" by the Italian audience.'
OK The word Jetta is meaningless in Italian, and sales are good. Score one for VW Marketing. I would like to say case closed, but in fairness to Alberto and the others that wrote me that "Jettas were bad luck", translationally speaking, there can be regional or dialectical differences, and so it may be more true in some Italian-speaking areas. Also, as with all the entries here, I check for other sources before posting, and did find some other mentions of it. So perhaps it is an urban legend or a case of "You say Jetta, I say Ietta".

OK, More mail from Italy. Francesco V. of Calabria writes that Jetta does mean "throw away", not only in Neapolitan dialect, but in southern Italy. Grazie Molto!

3. Car maker Honda introduced their new car "Fitta" in the Nordic countries during 2001, only to find out that "fitta" is an old word, currently used in vulgar language to refer to a woman's genitals in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. It was renamed to "Honda Jazz" for the Nordic market.
According to newspaper articles, Japanese ads said that "[Fitta] is small on the outside, but large on the inside". It's now called the Honda Fit in Japanese markets.
My thanks to Peter Karlsson for this report!

4. When General Motors introduced the Chevrolet (aka 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.

Not sure what name the Volkswagen Touareg uses in US because of the tow a wreck similarity.

Edit: its Tuareg.

Yea, it's still a Tuareg here. We also have the Morano...which is very close to Moron-o. Makes you wonder. Maybe they should call it the Retardo.

I still do not understand why anyone would want to buy a Smeg fridge.

The Smegma-5000?

lol @ i.beat blaxx. How does something like that even pass marketing?

that's a hell of a question

Those links don't show for me, for some reason.

Was J trying to show the irony of Ox's post as compared to the title of the thread? Or was that just a weirdo post?

I think he just wanted to say the same thing but was too lazy to type.

this