Friday, April 3, 2009

Reader Alanna K. tipped Alan and I about this young lady's tattoo,

Before I got my cherry blossom branch on CheckOutMyInk.com

Cherry Blossom on CheckOutMyInk.com

The captions of both photo said was Chinese for "Angel", which is also her name.

If she is referring the tattoo was transliteration from Mandarin Chinese, then the correct version would be 安琪儿.

If it was English-Chinese contextual translation, then it should be 天使.

8 comments:

  1. The calligraphy looks like graffiti written by kids...on a tree!

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  2. not-quite-correct meaning aside, the terribleness of that penmanship is truly frightening.

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  3. well maybe she was going for that grafitti angel kinda look... ^_^

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  4. the prounciation sounds more like Andrea than Angel. but then again, there are tons of 'different' translations out there :D

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  5. As valid a transliteration as any... assuming it's Angela not Angel.

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  6. According to About.com, "Angela" is 安吉拉.

    http://chineseculture.about.com/library/name/female/blna_angela.htm

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  7. The sakura (cherry blossom) branch and the Chinese characters don't really make much sense unless you're purposely trying to bastardize Japanese and Chinese in one fell swoop.

    Plus the hanzi calligraphy is what we call in Chinese “鸡爪”...aka Chicken scratches.

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  8. This is something I never understand about tattoos. Not knowing the meaning is one thing, but when you hire someone to mark your body - shouldn't you pick a person who has some minimal graphical skills?

    I don't claim to be proficient in writing mandarin characters - still: I could produce better looking hanzi while riding in a shaking bus.

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