INSIDE
March 2018 BCBusiness 65
Lost in
Translation
IllustratIon: Kagan Mcleod
Car names are often
incomprehensible—
and sometimes they
backre
by Steve Burgess
Follow the leader ... Wrestle maniac ... Steak out at the Parq ... Tinder for the food-waste world ... + more
M A R C H 2 0 1 8
"When I couldn't shake the image
of some of the scale of waste from
my mind, I felt I had to jump in to
solve the problem" –p.70
Off lıne
E V E R Y B O D Y ' S TA L K I N '
WATERCOOLER
What's a Camry? Is there an English transla-
tion of Acura? Is Qashqai a New Delhi
game show? How many calories are there
in Previa? Should I be concerned if my doc-
tor says I have a severe abdominal Lexus?
Car brands are a language of their
own—often connected to other human
dialects, but just as often beyond translation.
Toyota's Camry is apparently a corruption
of the Japanese word kanmuri, meaning
crown. The proper translation of Lexus might
be "a long meeting where everybody just
wanted to make a decision and go home."
But whether or not they mean anything, car
names can tell us something about the ins
and outs of international marketing.
The Nissan Qashqai is a sport utility
vehicle that has gotten good reviews. Aside
from any technical innovations the car may
o‹er, it has certainly succeeded in the
grammatical breakthrough of separating q
from u. But unlike some generic vehicle
names, Qashqai has a specic meaning. The
Qashqai are a collection of tribes living in
southwest Iran, mostly Turkic in origin. The
word qashqai is believed to mean a horse
with a white star on its forehead, although
other meanings have been proposed.
It's an exotic name for a vehicle—
apparently too exotic for the U.S. market,
where the Qashqai is sold as the Nissan
Rogue Sport. Perhaps it is unfair to suggest
that American marketers looked at the
results of the last presidential election and
