Banners reading "Soyez la chèvre" on the Hudson's Bay building in downtown Montreal. Right: A Columbia Sportswear ad.
It's not as baaaaad as it seems. An ad for Columbia Sportswear on the side of the Hudson's Bay building in downtown Montreal calls on viewers to "Be The Goat." While in English "goat" can be understood as an acronym for "greatest of all time," it loses that double meaning in the French version on the banners: "Soyez la chèvre."
It's not just a bad translation, however.
Banners reading "Soyez la chèvre" on the Hudson's Bay building in downtown Montreal.Thomas MacDonald | MTL Blog
The English version of the Columbia ad campaign also refers to the animal.
"Goats don't care about being 'the g.o.a.t." a video associated with the campaign states. "They just care about being a goat. Doing goat things. [...] Because they have an innate drive and, more importantly, the right tools to go wherever they will. And you've got that same will, we've got the way."
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The series of banners on the Hudson's Bay building does include images of a goat. But that hasn't prevented confusion among some onlookers.
A March 29 tweet about the banners has received hundreds of likes and dozens of comments, many questioning the translation.
"The translation team decided to keep the goat concept probably because of the graphics," a comment from Twitter user MathieuGomez8 reads. They posit that "the English marketing team didn't think about other languages... It happens in the translation world, there are sacrifices to be made."
Contacted by MTL Blog, a Columbia spokesperson said the direct translation was intentional.
"We understand that some consumers may read into the headline and take-away a double meaning, but our clear intention was to correlate the on-trail confidence of a goat, and the performance of our footwear," they said.
They also explained a French-speaking Montreal-based team was responsible for the translation.
