Wednesday, May 2, 2007

"Panda Process"

This photo was posted in BMEzine's tattoo gallery with the title of "Panda Process".


http://www.bmeink.com/A70430/high/bmepb514122.jpg

The top "character" does not look like anything I have seen before. The lower character has been blurred and distorted (probably from repeatedly copy one set of template many times) that I am not sure if it is or .

18 comments:

  1. Note to non-asians: Does your tattoo design look more like mud flung onto paper than an actual Chinese character? Then don't get it.
    Go find yourself a patient Chinese guy or gal to help you pick something halfway decent.

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  2. I thought it looked like 拓节, myself.

    Perhaps it's "open season" on those with bad tattoos?

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  3. I think we're missing the key point here:

    What the hell is a panda process.

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  4. Did you see this one - http://www.bmeink.com/A70430/high/bmepb511693.jpg

    The description says "'tattoo' in Japanese"

    That actually says "tomato"!

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  5. To me it looks like 士 and ⽯.

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  6. About the "tomato" guy - according to his profile site, http://iam.bmezine.com/?tat2edtomato87
    , it is actually supposed to be "tomato".

    What he wrote on the BME site was "Tattoo" in Japanese...needs to be touched up", so perhaps he has a split personality.

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  7. Maybe the top character is 垢, which would be appropriate as the tattoo is rather disgraceful. And the bottom is... 蒂? So together they make for a guodi? A dirty fruit stem...? I'm confused.

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  8. 垢蒂
    That's what it looks like to me. Could be the phonetic display of "Cutie".

    Conjures up the imagery of dead organic matter trapped inside the deep cavern of one's belly button, where the umbillical cord once connected.


    dirt


    stem, sounds like cord

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  9. 垢蒂
    That's what it looks like to me. Could be the phonetic display of "Cutie".

    Conjures up the imagery of dead organic matter trapped inside the deep cavern of one's belly button, where the umbillical cord once connected.


    dirt

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  10. I suppose I should be glad that Hangul doesn't have the same allure as Chinese/Japanese characters to silly Westerners...

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  11. I suppose I should be glad that Hangul doesn't have the same allure as Chinese/Japanese characters to silly Westerners...

    Glad? Come on; think of how much fun it'd be every time you spotted something screwed up!

    Anyway, any idea on what this guy was trying to go for? Phonetic representation sounds like the most plausible theory said thus far. K

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  12. Well, at least Hangul is phonetically based, even if it's not really suited for English, especially with our rather complex syllables.

    But, Hangul is just less attractive than hanzi/kanji or even kana, in my opinion, which may be why it's not so popular.

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  13. The top immediately struck me as 姫 (Japanese for princess, I'm not familiar with Chinese) but the woman part got smashed into 土 and the right part just lost a lot of strokes. and the second as 帝, imperial.
    Overall a very bad job if that's what was intended.

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  14. the first one kinda looks like 拓 (Land clearing)

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  15. I'm pretty sure that the first character is meant to be 妬 (envy). If you look carefully you can see all three strokes of the 'woman' radical (not to be confused with "the radical woman"); however the strokes are all overlapped. As a previous poster mentioned, they have probably copied their template repeatedly and lost detail.

    So, they must be trying to say something about "envy" and "regret" (or "envious eggplant", but that seems dodgy.)

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  16. びっくり said...
    I'm pretty sure that the first character is meant to be
    (envy).

    Nice catch, びっくり! That must be it. And now I can see that the top part of the "second character" is actually the hiragana け, giving 妬け (yake - jealousy, envy) in Japanese.

    Now what could the remainder be?

    I'm just thinking out loud here, but there is a Japanese expression yakekuso which means something like "in desperation" or "what the hell." I suppose it could be ignorantly and incorrectly written 妬け屎 (it is correctly written 自棄糞 or 焼糞) so could this be a pitiful attempt to write that?

    I do see some of the strokes from 屎 in the mess at the bottom.

    -Alan

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  17. Lookes like 北蒂 - a transliteration of Betty perhaps?

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  18. Guys, you're all thinking about it too much. It's two eyes, a nose, and a mouth with a goatee.

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