Thursday, August 04, 2005

French kiss!


"This summer, work on your French kiss!" It could be a local advertising campaign to encourage couples to have more babies (!), but no, it's just an ad for Disneyland Resort Paris! The funny part is that, because of a law that prohibits the use of foreign words in advertising - and all public documents - they had to put an asterisk after French kiss and write down the translation on the bottom left of the poster, as you can see here on the blow up!

10 comments:

  1. Come on! That translation is really lame (but I can only think about the slang terms, like "un patin" or "une pelle," for "French kiss." In fact, I never liked the expression "French kiss" - what in the world is so French about that kind of kiss, except that it is of course, sexual in nature (and the French are supposed to be better lovers, right?)

    This ad is interesting, though, because The French have no problem suggesting that Mickey and Minnie Mouse actually have sex (don't they have children, though?)

    Thanks for sharing this one with us!

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  2. Laughing out loud.
    That one's made my day, Eric.:)
    Thanx

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  3. Looks more like poor Mickey and Minnie are only rubbing noses!

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  4. Haha. I love it.

    Though, from the look of the ad, it looks as if it should read: Cet été, travaillez votre Eskimo kiss.

    I love how the French are such language purists.

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  5. prohibiting foreign words in advertising?? why??

    i'm so thankful for all those english ads here in the netherlands so i understand more and feel easier around the town. but sometimes i don't understand why they have so many english commercials on telly that many locals here don't understand. last time my man's granny asked me the meaning of some commercials, because she didn't understand what they were saying (in english).

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  6. Actually yes, in order to protect the French language they passed a law (in 1994) prohibiting the exclusive use of foreign words in public documents (that includes advertising of course, but also operating manuals, etc.).
    That is you can use foreign words (as they obviously did here) but you have to provide the translation.

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  7. En tout cas, on ne peut pas dire qu'Eric participe acivement à la "protection de la langue française" ;-)

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  8. Exact mon cher Marc, mais ce n'est pas le but de ce blog qui est de promouvoir la ville que j'aime dans le monde entier...

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  9. I have an friend who works at Disneyland, and for about an hour we stood in front of the that advertisement; i was telling him how revolted i was, because Disneyland's target are mainly families with children from 5 to 14. There is a sexual connotation to it, but one has to notice they only rub noses; so my friend told me 'hey, a french kiss isn't sexual, you want me to show you?'. Well there it was though, this is an ad for the other target, the 18-27 year old, people like me. A kid doesn't know what a french kiss is; maybe they thought about being able to take it at different degrees; for kids it's mickey and minni rubbing noses and disneyland, for teenagers it's the famous french kiss, which happens so much better in france!!!
    keep it up, this blog rocks

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