http://www.flickr.com/photos/24732264@N07/2619349327/
Its caption in Spanish said:
Amor, Dios, Familia
Traduccion literal
Ama a Dios cmo a tu Familia
Which means,
Love, God, Family
Literal translation
Love God the way you love your family
Nice sentiment, however there probably will not be much love for the tattooist. Love 愛 & Family 族 are mirrored.
The translation of "Ama a Dios como a tu Familia" should be "Love God the way you love your family".
ReplyDeleteIt is not only mirrored, but ugly as can be. Geez...
I'm curious as to why the first two characters are mirrored, but they got the last one right? (Aesthetically displeasing, but still correct.) KF
ReplyDeleteI'm curious as to why the first two characters are mirrored, but they got the last one right?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure, but aren't these tatoos applied with stencils, with one stencil per character? Stencils are easily reversed left-to-right, either intentionally or accidentally.
This is not usually a problem for simple images. Stencils are made to be reversible because some images look better one way or the other depending on placement and other elements of the overall tattoo. But if the tatooist cannot read letters or other characters, they may not know which way is right.
In this case, the tatoo artist guessed wrong on two out of three.
-Alan
If they were done with stencils, those were certainly some ugly stencils to be using...
ReplyDeleteAside from that, 族 is typically used to refer to clan/tribe, probably not exactly what he meant as "family."
Some stencils are made from a special kind of fake tattoo. In those fabricated fake tattoes, the pattern is applied like a sticker on the skin. In order to write a word properly, those letters (or characters) should be mirrored. However when a person copies the character directly from these stickers s/he copies it reverse, e.g. if the letter R is copied from those, you get the Cyrillic letter "YA", which looks like a mirrored letter R. People are mostly unfamiliar with Chinese characters so they mostly don't know that it's mirrored.
ReplyDeletelike glenn said, 族 is a very poor substitute for "family" because i've never seen it used like that, but i have seen it used for "race" or "ethnicity," like in: 种族 (race). the meaning isn't flattering -- it's about as warm as the term "race" is in english.
ReplyDelete族, in Japanese mostly used in the sense of social groupings (e.g. たけのこ族, Takenoko-zoku; A youth clique in the 80's known by their flashy attire and street dancing or 暴走族, Bousouzoku; Motorist gang).
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, family is more associated with 家, as in 山田家 (Yamada-ke, the Yamada Family)
The Chinese looks like it reads "Love the tribal gods"! Perhaps not what the person intended.
ReplyDeleteIt could also mean something like "God of the Love Tribe." I think this sounds a bit racier and more suggestive than what was perhaps intended.
ReplyDelete-Alan