I have started to verify all characters in two versions (Traditional and Simplified) of Chinese and Japanese, after reader Eden Li's suggestion. Chinese (Hanzi) and Japanese (Kanji) share some characters, except meanings and writings may vary.
Tattoo above still means "power pig" in both Chinese and Japanese.
力 = power, force
豚 = piglet
sources:
AltaVista
JDIC
Wikipedia (Chinese & Japanese)
Worldlingo
Zhongwen
Unihan
It's possible that this one might not be a mistake. I can think of several circlces within the BDSM community where one might deliberately get a tattoo that says this.
ReplyDeleteFor those don't know what BDSM stands for, it is the abbreviation of "bondage & discipline" (B&D), "domination & submission" (D&S) and "sadism & masochism" (S&M).
ReplyDeletehmmm the second charater can also mean the 2nd letter of the chinese charater 'dolphin'
ReplyDeleteThis is a long shot, but maybe he wanted to be a biker - a road "hog".
ReplyDeleteNa, he probably saw the picture of it in a tattoo place and thought the Chinese characters and flame effect around it looked pretty cool. And yeah, to show off to his biker buddies.
ReplyDeleteIn my oral English class here in Guiyang, my kids did an English 西游记 (Journey to the West)/孙悟空 (Monkey King) story. In their version, they gave 猪八戒 (Zhū Bā jiè) the English name "Power Pig". Maybe this guy is a Journey to the West fan!
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