1 week Ago
There’s a very famous scene about this sort of thing in Quentin Tarantino’s hit 1994 movie Pulp Fiction – so you’d think that multinational fast food giant McDonald’s would be aware of translation issues when it came to naming their products. But, while they have long understood that France runs on metric rather than imperial, rendering a Quarter-Pounder with cheese a ‘Royal cheese’, bosses made the mistake of thinking that their new ‘Big Arch’ burger fell into Big Mac territory in France (“a Big Mac’s a Big Mac, but they call it le Big-Mac”). The coronary-in-a-bun that is the Big Arch burger – proudly advertised as being made for ‘the hungriest of appetites’ – is made up of two juicy (and 100 percent French, naturally) beefburgers, melting cheddar, crispy onions, salad, gherkins and sauce, all in a soft sesame and poppy seed bun.
It was launched amid great fast food fanfare this month (you’ve probably seen them advertised on billboards) and named in glowing reference to the famous golden arches of the logo. So far, so tasty. But.
.. The 1,000 calorie-plus burger doesn’t translate quite so well in the Alsace region of north-east France.
The word ‘Arch’ is very close to ‘arsch’ in the Alsatian dialect – which is very close to German. And ‘arsch’ means arse [or ass, for American readers]. That’s right - order a Big Arch in Alsace and you’ll also be the butt of bad jokes about your eating habits.
At least it’s not false advertising...
9 things that make Alsace different to the rest of France Over the border, in Germany, McDonald’s caught the potentially embarrassing language slip before launch. And the burger has been renamed ‘Der M’. But, here in France, the lack of Alsatian people in the marketing department meant that it got through launch unchecked.
At least they could smile about it. In a statement to Ici Alsace, a McDonald's spokesperson admits having missed the Alsatian issue: “Our Big Arch recipe actually has a different name in Germany due to a rather..
. inappropriate translation. “We hadn’t identified the similar issue in Alsace and we laugh along with them.
” And the spokesperson issued an appeal to McDonald’s customers in Alsace: “To our Alsatian customers: its name may not be the most appealing to you, but we assure you that it is really very good.”.
