Coke or Pepsi

Bloomberg Businessweek reported, in its article For India's Consumers, Pepsi Is the Real Thing published in September 20-26, 2010 issue, that Pepsi became a common synonym for cola in India's most widely spoiken language after having the market to itself in the early 1990s - Pepsi had the Indian market to itself for three years during Coke's absence.  The article said that PepsiCo's linguistic advantage translates into higher sales for its namesake cola.  "Lalita Desai, a linguist at Jadavpur University who studies how English words enter Indian languages. 'And with no real international competition, 'Pepsi' became this catch-all for anything that was bottled, fizzy, and from abroad.'"

I read this article recently by chance and it reminded me of a blog post I published last month Coca Cola, Mercedes-Benz and Yosemite, in which I described how that the Chinese translations for Coca Cola is 可口可乐 (pronounced as: ke-kou-ke-le), which means delicious and cheering.  The truncated form Coke was simple 可乐 (ke-le), cheering.

This delicious translation of Coke therefore played a very positive role for Coca Cola's sale in China.  There, 可乐 (Coke) became this catch-all for anything that was bottled, fizzy, and from abroad, though it has to be dark.  Sprite (雪碧 - Snow Bright) represents those fizzy but clear soft drinks.

The power of words!