The Marketer - the official magazine of The Chartered Institute of Marketing, published an interesting article in their October 2007 issue; 10 cultural clangers to avoid. Here are a few of them;

Disastrous cereal launch in India
Kellogs launch of cornflakes in India was a disaster. Indians don’t eat cold breakfasts, and hot milk turns the cereal into slop. 

Beer for those who suffer from diarrhoea
Coors translated its slogan "Turn it loose" into Spanish, where it became "Suffer from diarrhoea"

The hair fertilizer stick in Germany
Clairol introduced the "Miss Stick" in Germany only to find out that "mist" is German for manure.

Bring your ancestors back from the grave - in China
PepsiCo’s "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" translated into Chinese as "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave

Microsoft upset entire populations of women
Microsoft upset entire populations of women. In an unfortunate
mistranslation, a Spanish-language version of Windows XP destined for
Latin America asked users to select their gender as "Unspecified",
"male" or "bitch.

If you have similar "clangers" you would like to share, don’t be shy.

More information about The Chartered Institute of Marketing and the magazine The Marketer - click here