Linguistic limitations

SLANG CONFUSION
Unless you are a native speaker of a country who is up to date with all of the slang, innuendos, idioms, jokes and technological meanings you have no business designing advertising in another country. Even native speakers do not understand the potential pitfalls of dialects, other religious groups within the country and regional areas can have great differences. Encoding and decoding of an idea between two people of different linguistic backgrounds is filled with pitfalls. Taco Bells famous catchphrase in 1997 Yo Quiero Taco Bell! meaning I want Taco Bell may not be understood by other people not speaking this language.

LITERAL MEANING
Even if the home office decides on the basic message for a product, the native language speakers must be allowed to shape that message and adapt it as necessary. They will, if done properly and by using multiple translators and target audience feedback shape the wording, the level of directness of the message, the writing style, the type of humour, the idioms and slang to get your message across in a way that you cannot. They also understand the unspoken understandings that certain words imply or do not imply. Low levels of literacy can also cause problems for the advertisers. Pepsi spooked Chinese consumers when it didn't realize its "Come alive with Pepsi" slogan translated to "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead" Coors' "Turn it loose!" tagline took on a whole new meaning in Spain, where it translated to "You will suffer from diarrhea" When Clairol brought its "Mist Stick" curing iron to Germany, it failed to realize "Mist" is German slang for manure, resulting in crappy sales numbers for the product

IMPORT TARIFF
(1) a tax on imports or exports (an international trade tariff), or (2) a list of prices for such things as rail service, bus routes, and electrical usage (electrical tariff, etc.). Opposition to all tariff Organization aims to reduce tariffs and to avoid countries discriminating between differing countries when applying tariffs.

SAFEGUARD
is used to restrain international trade in order to protect a certain home industry from foreign competition. A member may take a safeguard action (e.g. restrict importation of a product temporarily) to protect a specific domestic industry from an increase in imports of any product which is causing, or which is threatening to cause, serious injury to the domestic industry that produces like or directly competitive products.