You know it’s some ancient post because it had awards.
Unfortunately, it’s been dead for a couple of years now, but this blog used to translate everyone’s Asian-language tattoos.
A significant number of them use characters that are not from any language at all.
Quite a few that do have meanings are pretty funny, sometimes are quite ironic too.
https://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/
Edit: I forgot about this, but it’s still on the front page of that blog and I laughed all over again.
I was in line behind someone who had 安 on her nape. I’m guessing she was going for a meaning of like peaceful or restful or something along those lines but you need a compound like 安心 or 安静 for that.
The character alone means more like cheap, at least in Japanese. Maybe it’s different in Chinese.
变态外人
biàntài wàirénThanks! Didn’t recognize simplified character behind traditional at first
It would indeed be the case if it were Chinese.
However it seems it’s written in Japanese and follows the Japanese 新字体・舊字體 standard instead of the Chinese 简体字・繁體字
変態外人－Japanese Shinjitai
變態外人－Chinese Traditional
变态外人－Chinese Simplified
In Wales road signs are printed in both English and Welsh. When a new sign was being made someone sent the English part to a translator, who’s out of office message was in Welsh. They assumed that message was the translation and printed it on the sign.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mistranslated-welsh-traffic-sign/
Not a translation error but the worst tattoo I ever saw on someone was a guy with a bloody tampon tramp stamp.
bloody tampon tramp stamp
“bloody” as in bloody idiot, or “bloody” as in black pudding?
I assume this is one of them dual meanings
My guy. My dude. My man.
Do you know what a tampon is / does? You might be able to infer from that alone.
Alexa, what’s a tampon?
Indeed 'twas a tampon with blood upon it
I never tattooed it on myself, or anyone else, but I used to work at a local greasy spoon, and knew a Professor of English that came in regularly, who was originally from China. I asked him for the name specific characters that phonetically made up the syllables of my and my girlfriend’s names, he went to wait for his food, and came back with the characters he thought would work best. I used those to burn the characters into the weed stash box that she and I had made.
We told everyone that asked that we had no clue what it actually meant, it just sounded like our names.
But…what did it mean?
English names tend do just get characters that sound phonetically like their English pronunciation. As such, a lot of names, especially longer ones, don’t mean anything. If you directly translated them, a lot of the time you’d get like “cabbage the horse wheel” or something.
If you directly translated them, a lot of the time you’d get like “cabbage the horse wheel” or something.
That reminds me of the “Password Strength” comic by xkcd. All right, it’s settled. Next time I need new password, I’m feeding random names into a phonetic name translator.
So the characters are still words, right? As in not phonetics? Would it be like someone named Tristan getting the Spanish word Triste because it sounds like Tristan?
The Chinese English professor told me that my name meant something like “strong ox” and hers meant “beautiful lotus,” but I have no way to verify that, as I no longer have the box. She does.
I knew a guy who had “bad to the bone” written on his neck in Chinese. The problem is, the phrase doesn’t translate at all.
So, his tattoo read as “my bones are bad”
Tbf, he was a clown and had something like that coming.
Now the day I was born The nurses all gathered 'round And they gazed in wide wonder At the horror they had found The head nurse spoke up Said, “Leave this one for dead” She could tell right away That my bones were bad
My bones are bad My bones are bad B-B-B-B-Bad B-B-B-B-Bad B-B-B-B-Bad
My bones are bad
When Mr. Glass decided to get a music career.
Newlines only work properly if the previous line ends in two spaces btw (or if there are two newlines)
Mine is similar. On my forearm,not my neck (yuck). It’s supposed to be “blood and guts”. Literal translation equals something about “inside organs”.
I’m okay with that. If you actually discuss the meaning of works out fine.
I got that tattoo because I actually work with “blood and guts” as a Paramedic.
Not his fault, that’s just a mean or ignorant tatooist. Why wouldn’t they just do a literal word for word translation if there’s no equivalent phrase in Chinese?
Like if the phrase “great to the neck” has some special meaning in Chinese but not English, you can still write the english words “great to the neck” on someone’s skin.
Unfortunately, I can’t read the language it was written in and I can only go with the people we knew and met who could.
I was thinking of getting 何か日本語で “nanika nihongo de” and if someone would ask me what it meant I’d say “something in Japanese”
I’ve wanted to get Leviticus 19:18 tattooed on me somewhere prominently for years, but too many people would not get the joke and think I was religious.
Reading through various translations, the first part seems to say "don’t cut/gash your body in honor/memory/mourning of the dead, but most of the translations leave it somewhat ambiguous (at least to me) as to whether it means “don’t tattoo yourself in honor/memory/mourning of the dead” or just, “don’t tattoo yourself at all”. Also, it sounds as though cutting/gashing yourself for other reasons is isn’t breaking any rules.
Don’t ruin my good time.
I had a roommate that asked me for ideas for a tattoo and I told him to just get ‘Chinese Symbols’ written in all caps on him.
The amazing bastard did it.
well, I’ll bite. What’s it mean?
Something in Japanese
Alright, I’ll bite. What’s it mean?
Yeah, but what exactly?
Something in Japanese! What’s on my back?
Dude! What does it say?
What doesn’t say anything, he’s on second.
Sweet! What does mine say?
DUDE! What does mine say?
No, What’s on second
Then who’s on first?
Yes.
Ehm… isn’t “日本” = “Japan” both in chinese and japanese?
Thats what google translate is telling me anyway
Yes.
That’s actually hilarious.
I know someone who has something tattooed on him: in Thai.
As in, it’s a phrase which says ‘in Thai’ in Thai. So when people ask him, what is that? He says ‘it’s in Thai’. They say yes, but what is it? ‘It’s ‘in Thai’’. Yes, but…
You get the idea.
Trolling level expert 😂
Some guy came up to me when I first joined the military and told me “hey I got your name tattooed on my ass. Don’t believe me?”
Sure enough there was “YOUR NAME” tattooed on his ass check. I’m pretty sure he just liked showing people his ass.
I’m thinking that’s a combination of a lost bet and some cleverness.
Either it’s just a thing round here or that person is my childhood friend’s cousin. Their grandma wasn’t happy about getting got
Was it a nice ass at least?
It has to be if your name is on it
Sometimes, you put your name on the best ass you can get even if it’s not the best ass to put your name on.
Because your name is such dogshit that it makes everything around it nicer by comparison
It wasn’t plump, like how I prefer but I could see why some people would think his ass was nice. Being fit and young and all that.
This is like setting your guest WiFi password to “It’s on the wall over there.”
I knew a barista that set the wifi pass to “ten bucks”.
I have a tattoo that means “I don’t know, I don’t speak japanese.” It works when an English speaker asks me what it means, and it also worked with the Japanese when I lived in Japan and didn’t speak the language.
My sister’s first year in college she got the Chinese word for LOVE tattooed. Later she found out it was the correct symbol, only mirrored. I called her EVOL for a while
Tattooing yourself for the bit is next-level.
A buddy of mine got “OUCH” on the inside of his lip. Ironically, it hurt a lot less than the piece on his shin.
That’s the kind of stupid I like.
Who’s on first?
I remember seeing a FB post ages ago, of some dude saying that he went to Japan to tattoo “God is faithful” in Japanese because he didn’t trust local tattooists to write it right. The post was a photo of the tattoo on the dude’s arm.
Someone pointed that it said something along the lines of “idiot stranger”.
Mr “I went to Japan” complained that was impossible, because he went to Japan.
The other person posted a screenshot of the kanji on google translate and lo, “idiot stranger”
As someone who went to Japan, yeah I’d expect that shit there more than in America honestly
Even the premise: why would you want a Christian message in Japanese?
They were a big fan of Silence.
Some guesses: it looks cool, it makes people curious to ask “what’s that supposed to mean?”, the dude was a christian otaku
deleted by creator
Not the first time I’ve Lemmied this story, and it’s not a tattoo it’s a motorcycle decal. Kid turns up on a Kawasaki forum to show off his Ninja’s paint scheme, and on the front cowling are five kanji figures, the first and the third were identical. Someone asked “Why does your bike say ‘pig dog pig bird horse?’” He says “Nah man, it says N-I-N-J-A. That’s how you spell ‘Ninja’ in Japanese.”
Asian beauty makes me think of an ad for makeup. Alternatively, those cool looking mountains from old looking paintings that look like giant ant mounds.
Hentai Gaijin
Also reminds me of this story of a guy who wanted to have his name tattooed in Japanese. His name is Gary. And in Japanese it’s written in Katakana like this ゲリ but Gary didn’t think that looked cool and wanted to have it written in Kanji. So the artist gave him a tattoo of 下痢 which is pronounced as geri. Which actually means diarrhea.
Not sure if it’s true but would be funny as hell if it was.
Should’ve been ゲーリー, not ゲリ. No wonder people got confused.
This would be perfect for me and my IBS-D
Geri is my favourite Indonesian crackers, but not so much the chocolate ones…
In high school there was a Chinese girl who hung out with us. We were at at an arcade after school one day, and this guy comes up to her. She’s 16. He’s 40. He says something like “Hey baby, check this out!”
He takes off his shirt to reveal a not at all impressive body. But his chest had something tattood on it in Chinese.
She goes wide eyed, and runs off. When we caught up to her (obviously without the guy) she’s having trouble breathing, because she’s giggling so hard. Just try to visualize that. It’s not a belly laugh, it’s a giggle, but she’s giggling so hard she’s wheezing.
Now she spoke full perfect english, and only had a slight barely noticable accient. But when we asked her what was so funny, she went full stereotype Chinese voice from how amused she was at the tattoo.
“His chest…it say ASSHOOOOEEEE!!!” (She was saying asshole, but I typed it phonetically how she said it, and with the enthusiasm she said it).
She just burried her face in her hands, and had the biggest giggle fit I’ve ever seen. She later said “He must have been an asshole to the tattoo artist. He’ll never know!”
宫保鸡丁
kung pao chicken.
he thought it was super funny, like he was in on the joke.
