The company has hired translators to fix the problem
Most of us have probably owned a Borje, an Expedit or a Vika, but how about a Redalen.
It's a town in Norway and a bed being sold by Swedish furniture chain Ikea. But it's also a word that resembles getting to third base in Thailand.
As the Wall Street Journal reports, the company is having trouble getting their hard-to-pronounce item names to work around the world.
In addition to the Redalen bed, they are selling the Jattebra plant pot, which sounds in part like a crude sex term.
Ikea's solution is now to hire translators so the terms stop being misinterpreted.
"The Swedish...words are important because they bring a unique character to the brand," said Natthita Opaspipat, who spent nearly four years preparing for Ikea's Bangkok launch, to the Journal.
This is a growing problem for many companies. In China, Microsoft's search engine Bing sounds like "illness" or "pancake" so they changed it to "biying", similar to an expression
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