Original URL: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/11/03/asus_asteio_joke/
Asus would been well-advised to check the brandname of its latest media centre PC system (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/11/02/asus_unveils_asteio_media_centre/) with a linguist before announcing the product to the world this week. According to Reg Hardware readers, Asus' Asteio brand means 'joke' in Greek.
Ah, the dangers of branding a consumer electronics product to a global audience...
A quick check with AltaVista's Babelfish confirms the fact. Enter 'joke' and activate the English-to-Greek translation yields:
which is, as near as makes no odds, Asus' media centre PC brandname.
Asus can at least console itself that it's not alone in making such a mistake. Nintendo's Wii sounds rather amusing in English, though at least it's not a real word here. We have a gut feeling 'zune' is a rude word in certain rare Hittite dialects, but since that's not Microsoft's target market, so the software giant will probably get away with it. ®
Thanks to readers Luke Kontogiannis and Dimitris Giakoumakis for the tip
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