Part of the fun of seeing commercials or ads in foreign countries is to play the “Hey! I understood that!" Game. Catching the Japanese spokesperson try her hardest to pronounce “McDonalds" or seeing the familiar swooshes of the Coca-Cola logo make travel fun, if only to see how the other half 99% of the world lives.

I often forget that many brands are international, and have to adapt when moved to different regions of the world. On top of that, sometimes these area don’t use the same letter set. How can a person in Russia, who reads Cyrillic, possibly understand the title “Transformers"? What good does it do for an English-reader when he sees "ポケットモンスター" on the videogame shelf? That’s where it gets fun. Or hard. Or what have you.

The challenge for the designers of these international brands is to convey the brand they’ve so meticulously created in English to non-English speakers, reading non-Latin characters.

(via Brand New)