Rebecca Wigs: Fake Hair, Real Me

There’s a brand of high-quality wigs in China called Rebecca. The Chinese tagline for these wigs is:

rebecca-jiafa-zhenwo

假发,真我

The simple slogan (great for beginners!) sets up a nice contrast between the words 假 (fake) and 真 (real). It doesn’t translate well into English, though, because the word for “wig” in Chinese is 假发, quite literally, “fake hair.” So here are your two most obvious direct translation candidates:

  1. “Fake hair, real me”
  2. “Wig, real me”

Pretty bad. The wigs themselves look pretty gorgeous, though, and Rebecca hired Chinese superstar babe 范冰冰 (Fan Bingbing) is their model:

rebecca-fanbingbing1

rebecca-fanbingbing2

The Rebecca wigs also occasionally stray into the “slightly less than practical,” apparently:

rebecca-long-wig

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John Pasden

John is a Shanghai-based linguist and entrepreneur, founder of AllSet Learning.

Comments

  1. Nice. I’m trying to think of a slogan based on that line from 红楼梦: 假作真时真亦假 …

    Ivan

  2. I guess “Becky with the good hair” was lost in translation.

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