Strange "Love"

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"Family"

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"Forever Protector of Old Ladies"

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"Mommy"

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"Destroy"

I got an email from one concerned reader about his kanji tattoo for “destroy”. Along in the email, he has provided a link to one of the companies that sells the tattoo flash where his tattoo came from.


(screenshot, original site)

What the character 儡 really meant was not "destroy", but "puppet" or "dummy"!

I was overwhelmed about the number of misleading translations and errors they had on their website. It is obvious that people ran that website did not understand Chinese or Japanese. They should have consulted with someone before posting misleading product on their site. This is a blunt display of unethical business practice.

When people get sick from eating at unsanitary restaurants, they could file complains with the food safety branch of the government. What would you do when you have gibberish tattooed on your body?

Update: Tattoo By Design, the company I have mentioned above, has emailed me with this reply:

"Our translations are carried out by qualified translators. All images in the 'rate by tattoo' and 'library' sections are submitted either by users or by artists and are not done by us. I have seen many poor and wrong translations myself submitted in the galleries but they are not available for printing and are examples of what people have had done or sketched up and are not examples of our work." (original email)

It is also interesting to point out the pages mentioned in my original posting have now became "members only". (It has always been "members only")

Update 2: Johnny has pointed out more errors on that site.


(screenshot, original site)

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"Derek"

德里克 is the Chinese phonetic translation of "Derek" and its variants "Dereck" or "Derrick". Too bad the middle character is upside down.

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Bad Fortune

The last place I would expect to see Chinese errors would be inside the fortune cookies. 云吞食品公司 (Wonton Food Inc.) has found a way to make my nightmare come true.

Both Erik of Mandarin Tools and I had fortune notes with incorrect Chinese. I don’t care about the lucky numbers, nor the cheap Yoda-like Engrish pep-talks printed on the note, but I do care about the other side – Learn Chinese.



(wrapper)

Mine (shown above) was not as entertaining as what Erik got:

The Chinese pinyin is correct for “pot sticker”, but the printed Chinese 罐屠夫 is something completely different. 罐 is a type of ceramic container, similar to a jar. 屠夫 is butcher.

Shame on you, Wonton Food Inc. of Brooklyn, NY 11206!


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"Not to Forget"

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"Life" Mirrored

http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A50823/high/bmegl119642.jpg

If you managed to get 神 done correctly on the arm, why couldn't you do the same with 生?!


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"Exotic Atmosphere"

http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A50321/high/bmegl036049.jpg

I really hope this was just a photo error, but I doubt it. If they are done correctly, 異國情調 would mean "exotic atmosphere".


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Follow Up: Does This Say "Love"?

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First Female Extremely Hand?

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Blood Sweat Tear

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"tank"

http://photobucket.com/albums/y198/tank666/?action=view&current=Picture001.jpg

Many Asian countries use squatting type toilets, where the user squat over a water trench and water would wash the bio-mass down into the septic tank. These types of toilets in China are called 糞槽 (feces trench) or 尿槽 (urine trench).

The character 槽 may also mean “tank”, “trough”, and “groove” depends on context.

I had a good laugh when a reader emailed in his friend’s tattoo (see above) and said his friend wanted “tank” (military type, not the toilet kind) on him because he liked military tanks and he is a big guy.

By the way, “tank” (military type) in Chinese is 坦克 or 戰車, and 戦車 in Japanese.

Tiger, According to the Flash Book

http://www.flickr.com/photos/joeyplaid/34018004/

The character shown in the photo is far from 虎 (tiger). Since it was shown in the tattoo template book, then it must be correct, rignt?

Wrong.

Another one bites the dust, I mean needle.

Tattooed Twits

www.stuffmagazine.com

Thanks to everyone for emailing me about Hanzi Smatter been featured in October 2005 issue of STUFF Magazine.

-Tian

tiangotlost at gmail dot com

http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A50905/high/bmegl123947.jpg

The English word “screw” bears many meanings include “a rod-shaped piece with a spiral groove and a slotted or recessed head designed to be inserted into material by rotating (as with a screwdriver ) and used for fastening pieces of solid material together”, and in vulgar slang, “an act of sexual intercourse”.

The slang term “screw this” usually has meaning equivalent to “forget about it”. Unfortunately English slang often does not direct translate very well contextually into Chinese or Japanese.

This young man probably wanted to express his angst of “screw this” in Chinese (螺絲釘這), yet did not have the patience to verify if the contextual translation was correct or not. His tattoo literally means “insert screw-nail here”, which is something that comes with furniture assembly instruction.

Or he could be a loyal employee of IKEA corporation.

tattoo_baojimenglonggongxionghuanfulei2.jpg

Anyone who has ever stepped into a Chinese restaurant would know there are twelve Chinese zodiac. Apparently in the world this guy is living in, there are only nine. One of the zodiac has then replaced with “leopard” (豹) and the rest are random mirrored characters mixed with Chinese and Japanese. Of course, he did not believe his friends when they pointed them out to him, until now...

Un-healthy

http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A50905/high/bmegl127259.jpg

I don't know whether it was the client or tattooist's idea to give 康 a little "artistic flare". After all, who wants just a plain boring "healthy" to be tattooed in English? Unfortunately, they have done a pretty bad job and the tattooed character is missing several strokes.

"Respect"

http://www.art.com/asp/sp-asp/_/PD--10288287/Kanji.htm?sOrig=SCH&ui=1EE7518CC6DA4451BD4B293EDF22FE3E#

This "Respect" poster is for sale at various online stores. Both characters are poorly written. The top character 尊 is missing a horizontal stroke in the 酋 partial, and both top two strokes are suppose to be stand alone. The bottom character 敬 is missing its 口 partial.

Fake Zodiacs

http://nch46.eden2.netclusive.de/lj/023.jpg

Several years ago, this young man went to a tattoo shop in Germany and wanted zodiacs of his mother, sister and himself in Chinese characters to be tattooed on his back. He was very proud of it.

One friend of his has always thought the tattooed characters are fake and then sent a photo of it to a multi-lingual translation service. The translators could not figure out what exactly are those characters. Eventually, they have concluded the characters are gibberish that only mimicked Chinese and Japanese style of characters.

When I first saw this photo, the characters looked similar to some Chinese characters, but none of them are for zodiac.