There’s a well known story about Chevy’s introduction of Nova in Mexico, where the name means "no go".  I must have heard about it ten times in the importance of local insight in business context.  With the global nature of the Internet, there must be a ton of new similar anecdotes.

A good friend of mine, who’s Turkish, is an academic in the US.  He recently admitted that when he first started receiving LinkedIn invitations, almost exclusively from Turkish friends and colleagues, he assumed it was a Turkish company.  His reason:  "Link Edin", in Turkish, means "get connected".

UPDATE: Seth Godin, in a post, comments that the story about Nova is not accurate – that Nova tanked because it was a lousy car.  I am sure he’s right.