i.Beat Blaxx: A Dead Horse
This has travelled thoroughly through the Gadgetheral Plane, but it bears mentioning all the same. German manufacturer Trekstor named the latest "piano-black" MP3 player in their "i.Beat" line the "iBeat blaxx." (After the name hit the native-English bitwaves, they renamed it to "blax".)
I have serious doubts that the offensiveness of the name flew over the heads of the company, as "I beat *" jokes are probably daily occurrences at Trekstor, German or not. [ScaryIdeas]
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Somehow I worry that you are about to jump on some stereotyping bandwagon here when you say:
"I have serious doubts that the offensiveness of the name flew over the heads of the company, as "I beat *" jokes are probably daily occurrences at Trekstor, German or not."
I live in Germany and I am willing to bet hard cash that the poor sods at Trekstor *truly* never noticed/considered/thought of the implications or sound of this in English. There are many countries and cultures in the world whose frame of reference is neither centered on the English language nor American culture ... weird, right?
Even though many English words are used in every day speech in German (so-called "Neu-Deutsch" - using English words in German ways ... "das Meeting", "die Location", "downloaden" "das Beat" *in a musical context* and so on), I don't think you are justified in jumping to the worst possible conclusion. I prefer to think it was a simple cross-cultural f***-up, don't you?
Of course it's possible they were completely unaware of the connotations, but the "i.Beat blaxx" wasn't the first "i.Beat" product. I have a hard time believing that in the entire history of the company no one had ever pointed out to them what "i.Beat" means in English. I mean, it's about as basic, gramatically, as it comes.
I could be wrong, naturally, and they'd never own up to it even if it were true, so I guess we'll never know!
"downloaden" is a word? Fab. I love German.
When I read this, I immediately thought of this tasty Teutonic treat. Then again, the American equivalent is the Eskimo Pie, which contains a racial term that many Inuit find offensive, so pot-kettle-black, as it were.
I'm German and my English is quite good, but I never thought of "i.beat" that way until I read this article. I didn't even get it at first. Maybe it's because I would accentuate the "i" and because I thought of "beat" as the noun, not the verb, same as in ipod.
This is definitely a language problem, though they should have taken care of any potential language issues before releasing the product.
And yeah, annoyingly, some people say "downloaden", "pingen", "gamen" and lots of other cruelties to both languages...
Hrm, no linking in the comments. I was referring to http://www.slate.com/id/2118016/ if anyone wants to know what "this tasty Teutonic treat" is.
I am German and even though my English is acceptable (so native speakers tell me), I didn't notice the racist connotations until your blog pointed them out to me. I still had to read it twice before I found the slur.
I do agree with "HornCologne" (Koelsche Jung? ;-) ) that the Trekstor probably didn't notice. I'd go so far to hazard a guess that this is due to the vocabulary most Germans learn at school (if they take English). The German "schlagen" is generally translated with "to hit", not with "to beat". If "beat" is used anywhere in our schoolbooks, it's in the context of music and definitely not as a verb.
Knowing my fellow Germans, they had this fabulous idea to piggyback on Apple with the "i.", then appended the "Beat" to point to music. And "blax" was simply a statement about the colour of the device.
Jokes about hitting people because of their built-in tan are extremely rare here. We do tell jokes about Bavarians (or Frisians, depending on whether you're in Bavaria or Friesland; the jokes themselves are the same, though). The latter jokes fit our frame of reference, jokes about people of colour do not.
Besides, we don't tell jokes about hitting people. It's simply not done. Probably because violence is not an accepted behaviour here and immediately leads to social stigma to the point of exclusion.
@Halloween Jack: That treat is called "Schokokuß" (chocolate kiss) since the 1980ies. Originally it was a kind of baiser mass, baked and covered with chocolate. I have a cookbook dating of 1916 that calls them "Negerkuß" (negro kiss). Some older people refused to switch to the less offensive word, pounding on "tradition" and pointing out that something as desireable as a treat can hardly be offensive. The word "Negerkuß" is completely out of use by now, mostly because the stupid people have died out.
We also have a treat called "Amerikaner". It's a kind of dry and crumbling cake with lots of sugar. Quite unsatisfying, if you ask me ;-P
And then there's the treat called "Bombensplitter" or "Granatensplitter" (bomb or grenade splinter). It's a treat first made after WW2 which mostly consists of a bisquit mass (bisquit as in fine cake, not as in crunchy and bite sized) mixed with chocolate, raisins, dried figs etc and covered with chocolate. Talk about morbid humour.
Want some recipes? :-)
"Besides, we don't tell jokes about hitting people. It's simply not done."
This is true. However, I think Germans find a lot of humour in others' misfortune (see: schadenfruede). Once, in a mad dash to catch a train in Freiburg (and totally laden with a heavy backpack), I tripped in the doorway of the car and fell flat on my face. Everyone on the crowded train was laughing uproariously-- some pointing-- with nary a helping hand up. This included little old ladies.
I love the quotes from the press release about how it is a player for "Those who wish to do a lot more with their MP3 players than just listen to music", and "i.Beat blaxx precisely reflects the desires of the young, trend-conscious target group we are aiming for."
Not good.
Anyway, they have supposedly been informed on the racial overtones and are contemplating a name change. Trekstor better take a note from intel.
I too am german and I can tell you that it is very common here to make excuses for offensive racist language. I've been explained I don't know how many times that the terminum "Neger" was not offensive but just a local expression. As to "Negerkuß", it was first translated to "Mohrenkopf" in the 80's, thinking this would be less racist- "Mohrenkopf", though, tranlates exactly the same as "Negerkuß" with the only difference that "Mohr" is an old expression from colonial days while "Neger" is still the all-time-favoured expression of racial vileness. Only in the 90's after the fall of of the east german government and the horrible racist attacks that followed was is called "Chocokuss".
In contradiction to what the other anonymous german commenter said- and I must say that he is a typical example of how thoughtless people defend racial ambiguities-, I assure you that horrible jokes about africans are very common in Germany. It only matters where you are geographically and with what sort of people you are dealing. A frind had her ex from Dresden, ex-GDR, visit her and he and his friends wouldn't stop telling absolutely disgusting jokes about africans.
About Trekstor, all I can say is that they are either very unprofessional and insensitive or they actually calculated this from the point of view that there is no negative publicity. Which ever is the case, they should regret this by openly apologizing and making a donation to some organization that fights racism. Anything else would be, from the current point, defending an ambiguously racist position, even if this faux-pas was completely unintended.
One more confirmation for what other Germans said here. We tend to think of "beat" as a noun, and even though I consider English my main working language, and I read hundreds of English blogs and websites daily, I'd never heard of "I beat *" jokes before.
After several American friends pointed me at the original site, I thought they just found the name unwieldy or funny. After all, the name's offensive only if you read it aloud in English, not in any other language. There are many examples of American product names which are offensive in other languages...