单选题 .  The increase in global trade means that international companies cannot afford to make costly advertising mistakes if they want to be competitive. Understanding the language and culture of target markets in foreign countries is one of the keys to successful international marketing. Too many companies, however, have jumped into foreign markets with embarrassing results. Translation mistakes are at the heart of many blunders in international advertising.
    General Motors, the US auto manufacturer, got a costly lesson when it introduced its Chevrolet Nova to the Puerto Rican market. "Nova" is Latin for "new (star)" and means "star" in many languages, but in spoken Spanish it can sound like "no va", meaning "it doesn't go". Few people wanted to buy a car with that cursed meaning. When GM changed the name to Caribe, sales picked up dramatically.
    Marketing blunders have also been made by food and beverage companies. One American food company's friendly "Jolly Green Giant" (for advertising vegetables) became something quite different when it was translated into Arabic as "Intimidating Green Ogre".
    When translated into German, Pepsi's popular slogan, "Come Alive with Pepsi" came out implying "Come Alive from the Grave". No wonder customers in Germany didn't rush out to buy Pepsi.
    Even a company with an excellent international track record like Kentucky Fried Chicken is not immune to the perils of faulty translation. Many sales were lost when the catch phrase "finger licking food" became "eat with your fingers off" in Chinese translation.
    A manufacturer of one laundry detergent also made an expensive mistake in the Middle East. Its advertisements showed a picture of a pile of dirty clothes on the left, a box of the company's detergent in the middle, and clean clothes on the right. Unfortunately, the message was incorrectly interpreted because most people looked at it from right to left, the way Arabic is read.
    Having awakened to the special nature of foreign advertising, companies are becoming much more conscientious in their translation and more sensitive to cultural distinctions. The best way to prevent errors is to hire professional translators who understand the target language and its idiomatic usage, or to use a technique called "back translation" to reduce the possibility of blunders. The process uses one person to translate a message into the target language and another to translate it back. Effective translators aim to capture the overall message of an advertisement because a word-for-word duplication of the original rarely conveys the intended meaning and often causes misunderstandings.1.  It can be inferred that Chevrolet Nova ______.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】 根据题目中的Chevrolet Nova定位到第2段。
   第2段首句中的costly表明GM遭受了巨大的经济损失，第2、3句说明了其原因：Nova在西班牙语中具有贬义，导致销售下降。由此可见，B为正确的推断。
   原文虽然说Nova在拉丁语中的意思是褒义，同时也提到了在大多数语言中具有褒义，但也无法从中得出结论Nova当初是针对拉丁市场，因此A属于无中生有；Nova在西班牙语以外的市场表现如何，原文并未提及，排除D；C也不正确，因为Nova和Caribe都是同一款车，只是名字不同而已。
[参考译文]
   全球贸易的增长意味着跨国公司如果想要保持竞争力，就不能在广告上犯代价昂贵的错误。了解外国目标市场的语言和文化是国际营销成功的关键之一。然而，太多的公司投入外国市场却遭遇了令人尴尬的结果。许多国际广告犯大错，实质上是翻译错误。
   美国汽车制造商通用汽车在向波多黎各市场投入其生产的雪佛兰·Nova(意为“新星”)时得到了一个代价昂贵的教训。“Nova”是拉丁语中的“新(星)”一词，在许多语言中都有“星”的意思，但在西班牙口语中听起来像“no va”，意为“开不动”。没有人会想买一辆带有诅咒意义的车。后来通用汽车将其名字改为Caribe(意思是“水虎鱼”)，销量剧增。
   食品和饮料公司也犯过营销失误。美国一家食品公司的“快乐绿巨人”(蔬菜广告)听起来很亲切，但译成阿拉伯语后就变成了“吓人的绿色妖魔”，与原名根本就不是一回事了。
   百事可乐公司的流行口号“喝百事可乐，让你充满活力”翻译成德语后，暗含着“从坟墓中复活”的意思。难怪德国人没有对百事可乐趋之若鹜。
   即使是像肯德基这样国际营销业绩颇佳的公司也难免要犯错误翻译的风险。其妙句“吮指回味的食物”译成中文后变成了“连手指一起吃掉了”。
   一个洗衣粉生产商在中东地区也犯过代价高昂的错误。其广告画面左边是一堆脏衣服，中间是一盒该公司的洗衣粉，右边是干净衣服。不幸的是，人们没能正确地理解这些信息。因为按照阿拉伯语的阅读习惯，大多数人是从右往左看这个广告的。
   各公司认识到对外广告的特殊性质后，在翻译时更小心谨慎，对文化差异也更敏感了。防范错误的最佳方法是聘请了解目的语及其习惯用法的专业译者，或者使用“回译”的方法来减少犯错的可能性。利用这种方法让一个人将信息译成目的语，再让另一个人将译文回译为原来的语言。有实力的译者力求把握广告的整体信息，因为逐字逐句的直译很难传达出原文想要表达的意思，而且常常引起误会。