German Gift means poison — during a 2019 DACH launch, I flagged a ‘free gift’ bilingual tagline before it hit print and spared a €12k reprint. What other false friends have you caught that could derail a global campaign or muddle brand trust?
Caught ‘aktuell’ translated as ‘actual’ on a DE promo; it turned ‘current offers’ into ‘real offers’ and sounded off, . We keep a per‑market false‑friends blacklist in the TMS and run a preflight scan on Figma copy before print — it’s saved us from another €12k reprint. Do you also flag pairs like ‘eventuell’ ≠ ‘eventually’ or ‘assistir’ = ‘to attend’ (quick primer: False friend - Wikipedia)?
“Preservatives” in IT isn’t “preservativi” — that’s condoms; I once saw “senza preservativi” on a juice mockup and nearly snorted my espresso. We now run a pre‑publish scan that regex‑flags high‑risk lemmas and compounds (e.g., “Gift‑”) and blocks release until a linguist clears it; @greg88 do you hard‑block in the CMS or only surface warnings?
In ES, I’ve twice stopped ‘’ turning into ‘actualmente’ on hero banners — it reads as ‘currently,’ not ‘in fact’. My fix: a 10‑word back‑translation on headlines before layout; if it doesn’t come back as “in fact/” we rewrite, even if MT says it’s fine. It adds 30 seconds and has saved two reprints — anyone else using a tiny back‑translation gate?
Nearly shipped “Meet our chef” as “Lernen Sie unseren Chef kennen” in DE — it reads as meet the boss, not the cook. I keep a tiny hot-words list (e.g., “Chef”, “Kontrolle”, “Gift”) that auto-triggers in‑market signoff on any headline; way cheaper than a €12k reprint. What else belongs on the DACH must-review list?
In PT‑BR, “assistir” is “to watch,” so a CRM push saying “We’ll assist you” turned into “Vamos assistir você” — creepy nurse vibes. I keep a locale verb traplist in our TMS (assistir, pretender, luxo) that pings copywriters before anything ships. @Mariana, any other PT/FR gotchas you’d add?