The new recruit claimed that his tattoo means “Daisy” in Chinese.
I tried my best to decipher it, and then I realized the “characters” are just English alphabets that made to mimic the “Chinese-look”. Here are some similar fonts.
Apparently Mr. “Daisy” is not the only person that got fooled by this font type, here are two more:
http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A60919/high/bmepb355617.jpg
http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A60927/high/bmepb363248.jpg
I really hate the "Asian" fonts that use actual Japanese and Chinese characters that look similar to a letter - like (from the linked page) ソ for "Y" and 山 for "W". All it does is make people think they can read foreign characters because they're too dense to imagine that two things that look the same might not be the same.
ReplyDeleteOkay, the 2nd one must say "Hudson", but does the bottom one even say anything in english? maybe "wellin"?
ReplyDeleteI think that's "Manson" - but I can't figure out the last one.
ReplyDeleteI think the last one says "Warren" maybe?
ReplyDeleteI think it's supposed to read "Wallin"...
ReplyDeleteEither way, it looks like an oil slick vomited circuitry all over his back.
Reminds me of the work of the artist Xu Bing. He has given "calligraphy lessons" for non-Chinese speakers. The lessons play up various western clichés about the characters. Eventually the people who are "learning Chinese calligraphy" discover that they're actually just using boxy Roman characters to write English words. The participant is forced to re-examine their romantic stereotypes about the language.
ReplyDeleteSomething tells me, though, that whoever made these tattoos were _not_ doing the same thing...
at least, not intentionally.
I agree with the HUDSON suggestion on the second, and the third does look to me to be WALLIN, I'm wondering if it is supposed to be Warren heard said with a strong accent.
ReplyDeleteBob:"Reminds me of the work of the artist Xu Bing. He has given "calligraphy lessons" for non-Chinese speakers. The lessons play up various western clichés about the characters. Eventually the people who are "learning Chinese calligraphy" discover that they're actually just using boxy Roman characters to write English words. The participant is forced to re-examine their romantic stereotypes about the language."
ReplyDeleteI remember that our Japanese language teacher gave us an introduction packet on square-word calligraphy by Xu Bin two years ago. It's really interesting, and actually kind of funny...
Holy crap, that was like looking at an optical illusion...I was looking at these "characters" thinking "Huh, what? What horribly mangled real hanzi are these?" and then I read the explanation and it went BOING into focus.
ReplyDeleteThis is terrible. Wow.
Look at me! I can read Chinese now because look at my tattoo it says "Hudson" and I have to explain it to you because I'm so special like that. And mysterious. Girls are so into me because I also have "madness" on my calf just over there too! More Chinese! And I don't need to spend for-EVER trying to learn that ching-chong language when, look, the letters are just like English anyway!
ReplyDelete...I love your blog but I hate the people who get these tattoos.
The 'look-alike' fonts are hard for me to read because I want to see the characters in them, not mangled English lettering. Anyone who thinks that's an excuse for actual characters is a complete ignoramus.