THE LANGUAGE OF BUSINESS

These light bulb packages are printed in both English and French.

The freshness sticker on this Hardee's chocolate chip cookie is printed in English, Spanish and French.

This package for Schultz Seed Starter Plus is printed in English as well as French for the Canadian market.This package for IAMS Cat Food is printed in English and Japanese.

Selling laminated folders for paper in Mexico can be embarrassing. Ask Paul Wiedlin, president of M & W Packaging.

At one of his former companies, Wiedlin recalled producing packaging for a product called "the protector," designed to shield paper from spots or smudges.

His company later found out its translation of "protector" into Spanish was the word for condom.

As businesses of all sizes seek outlets to international markets, their use of foreign languages on their products becomes an issue, Wiedlin said.

The language printed on a package is another element that can help make a sale here or overseas, said Bob Buck, vice president of marketing for the seed and soil making Schultz Co. in St. Louis.

"We view the labels, language and packaging as part of our marketing mix," Buck said. "It has to work overtime to communicate to the consumer."

By selectively distributing bags of potting soil printed in Spanish in the United States and abroad, Schultz is simply taking advantage of a growing market segment, Buck said.

Hispanics have demonstrated strong brand loyalty, so if Schultz products are on the same shelf with packages printed in English, they can win a customer, he said.

In some countries, goods can't get across the border if they are only labeled in English. By law, products sold in Canada must be labeled in English and French, Wiedlin said. The countries comprising the North America Free Trade Agreement are obligated to use French, English and Spanish when exporting to a country that speaks one of those languages, Wiedlin said.

"So when you see something in the store that is in English, French and Spanish, it's NAFTA," he said.

M & W makes packaging in a myriad of languages, but no one at the facility is required to know any of them, Wiedlin said. The designs and labels are given to M & W in an electronic format, so the only errors in spelling or language usage would come from client companies.

Nevertheless, M & W will proofread package labels by computer before they are shipped. This is especially important with Asian languages, which use unfamiliar characters instead of commonly recognized Latin letters, Wiedlin said.

To cut costs, some manufacturers will request that foreign language pressure sensitive labels be placed on their English language packages. The result is mixed, Wiedlin said, with many peeling off between factory and store.

Few foreign language packages are made in their intended destination for sale. This is especially true for developing markets in Asia and Eastern Europe, where spending to create a manufacturing facility is initially too expensive, Wiedlin said.

In many parts of the world, Wiedlin said companies can get away with an English-only label.

"Sometimes it doesn't matter what country is buying," he said. "English is still the universal business language."

Although Schultz Co. has bilingual members on its marketing staff, it hires translators to complete and proofread its French and Spanish packages, Buck said. This practice is followed by most businesses worldwide.

Locally, many Proctor & Gamble products have NAFTA compliant labels but the only multilingual food items a grocery manager could find on his shelves here were a few cans of Folgers coffee, made by Proctor & Gamble.

Even with specialty food products made in Asia or Europe, the labels are often in English, said Jon Townsend, grocery manager at Schnucks. The company's name could be on a jar in Japanese, but by U.S. law the nutrition label listing the item's contents must be in English, he said.

Several boxes of Duncan Hines cake mix were not put on the shelves last year because they lacked English labels, but this is rare, Townsend said.

A manager took one of the boxes home, and he doesn't know what happened to the others.

"We think they were in Russian," he said.