哈哈，崩溃！错误百出、笑话百出的汉字纹身（组图）

来源：http://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

 

from: J. S.
to: [e-mail]
date: Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 5:58 PM
subject: Tattoo Translation

Hello,

I just stumbled across your blog and thought that you could assist me in verifying the meaning of my tattoo. I did them myself late one night a couple years back while apprenticing at a tattoo parlor.

Thanks

J. S.



First of all, the top character 苦 is upside down. Bottom characters 阿呆 means "fool, idiot".

The tattoo is very fitting & means "bitter [or suffering] idiot".

Thursday, July 8, 2010

 

from: james h.
to: [e-mail]
date: Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 3:52 PM
subject: Lost In Translation

I ran across your blog in the hopes that you might be able to translate my tattoo. A buddy of mine has the exact same tattoo and he got me it as a gift for my birthday. Over the years I've questioned the authenticity of the meaning and turns out he has know idea what it translates to. He told me it was kanji for "Fear No Man" , but I've looked in to it and know where can I find any similarities between what I have and what I have researched.

I would appreciate your help in translating my tattoo so I could have some peace of mind.

Thanks,

James



棺材佬 means "coffin man".

However, the middle character of 木見才 does not exist in Chinese character list.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

 

from: tim
to: [e-mail]
date: Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 2:32 PM
subject: tattoo interpretation

A coworker of mine has a tattoo he got while he was out partying a couple a years ago and has absolutely no idea what it means. Can you tell us?

Thanks,

Tim



Why would anyone be proud of tattoo that says: "to commit any imaginable evil"?

Thursday, March 18, 2010

 

from: DeKalb D.
to: [e-mail]
date: Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 3:24 PM
subject: Henna tattoos at Six Flags

Hi Tian :)

I was walking through Six Flags over Georgia today and came across this in a henna tattoo booth.

What really confuses me is that while most of the descriptions are accurate, ALL of them are backwards except one - 愛 is labeled as "lovers" but 愛 backwards is labeled as "love"!

First thing I thought of was of sending it to Hanzi Smatter and letting the world see it :)

DeKalb :)

 

 

Sunday, December 13, 2009

 

http://www.bme.com/tattoo/A91210/high/jyc7-tribals-natural.jpg

At firs, it looks like pure gibberish - mixed Japanese and Chinese characters:

厉 カ ネ 羊

But looking more carefully, perhaps the idiot started with these characters:

励祥

But then he decided to switch from horizontal to vertical writing, and then split up the characters at the wrong places, making two characters into four.

Hopeless!

 

By the way, what does 励祥 mean anyway?

Sunday, September 27, 2009

 

from: trellz
to: [e-mail]
date: Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 12:13 PM
subject: tatoo submission

Should say stupid American, or stupid foreign person.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

 

from: Kama
to: [e-mail]
date: Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 12:51 AM
subject: tattoo request

HanziSmatter site is amazing, great idea :) I love reading it. Chinese and Japanese characters looks great, but I still don't understand why people are tattooing their names in those languages, when they come from German, England or Poland, like me.

I guess they want to look cool, like my friend, who is 100% sure that he has "Julia" tattoo on his left hand.

Is he? Please, help me to translate it right (if it's not ok) because he is playing so smart, that would be a pleasure to prove him wrong ;)

Greetings from Poland,

Kama

Monday, July 13, 2009

Help with translation - Faith, Hope and Love!

 

from: Erik F.
to: [e-mail]
date: Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 9:32 AM
subject: Help with translation - Faith, Hope and Love!

Hey there!

My friend went to Turkey and got himself a tattoo in chinese or japanese. According to him it says "Faith, hope and love", but being the sceptical person I am, I thought I should send a picture to you to verify.

Does it really say that, or is this another case of "Prepaid Public Transportation Card"? (A part of me is hoping it is!)

Thanks for your time!

sincerely,

Erik



To one that is only familiar with Chinese or Japanese, this tattoo would be gibberish.

A quick look via Google Translator, I soon realized this is Chinese phonetic translation of Turkish, where Faith is "inanc" (伊南), Hope is "umut" (乌穆特), and Love is "ask" (阿士克).

The irony is with current situation in Xinjiang, China, were most ethnic Turks reside, Chinese and Turks are not on the best of terms.

Why would anyone stupid enough to get a Turkish phrase to be phonetically translated & tattooed in Chinese? It's like begging to be the Lucky Pierre in middle of an ethnic conflict.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

 

from: David L.
to: [e-mail]
date: Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 12:11 PM
subject: tattoo meaning

Hi, I'm called David Lopez.

I'm from Barcelona and I would like to know that it means a tattoo that I did to myself years ago.
I believe that it is Chinese and though I did it for aesthetics, now I am afraid of taking a meaning that I don't want.

My girlfriend and I would have a lot of interest to know the real meaning of my tattoo.

Thank you very much in advance. You will be of great help!

David



賈 means "buy/trade", 路 means "road, path", 卡 means "card".

賈路卡 sounds like a type of prepaid card that allows its owner to access public transportation. Typically it is called 乘车券定期券 (short for 定期乘车券) in Japan and 月票 in China.

Some readers suggested this could be translation of "Jeanluc", but that is not correct. Jeanluc is 吉魯克.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

 

from: Roger P.
to: [e-mail]
date: Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 8:39 AM
subject: Co-worker's Tattoo

Hi there,

I was talking about your website with a co-worker of mine, in reference to one of your articles. She wanted me to find out if the tattoo she got really means what she wanted it to mean (obviously!). Here is a pic of her tattoo. She thinks it means "Bitch." What does it look like to you?

Thanks,

~Roger



Why would anyone wanted to label themselves in such negative way?

Typically bitch as noun is translated as 母狗 and 婊子 as slang.

What this woman tattooed 贱女 really means "cheap whore".

Monday, February 16, 2009

 

From www.rankmytattoos.com:

I'm Robert (aka. iluvchickswithinks81), I got these Chinese and Russian characters at Hardcore Tattoo, also the tribals on my shoulders that go up onto my neck, my last name inside my arm in old english lettering and last but not least my nipple pierced.




Robert's back is covered with random characters. All of them are poorly done and some of them are not even correct. I have yet seen the Russian characters he is referring to.

This is absolutely shitty tattoo work.

 

 

Sunday, December 14, 2008

 

A few years back there was a sitcom on NBC called Committed. In one episode, one of the lead character had some tattoo work done at New Orleans and it turned out to be something along the line of "of two men who love each other, you are the one plays the woman." Eventually he got the tattoo fixed to "Lemon Chicken."

www.hanzismatter.com/lemonchicken.mov (10.4MB)

Of course, that was only in a comedy sitcom.

No so!

Someone actually got Sesame Chicken 芝麻雞 tattooed on him and proud of it:


http://bmeink.com/A81211/high/owl8-ink-update.jpg

Mirrored Death

 

http://www.rankmytattoos.com/tattoo-designs/chinese-symbol-tattoo-11776006292354.html

Another gem from Rankmytattoos.com, it is a mirrored 死 (death).

 

 

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Bushido Virtues Lost

 

User "Silat1" posted this photo in tattooartists.com:


http://www.tattooartists.com/images/asian%20tattoos/kanji-tattoo.jpg

The seven virtue of Bushido are so poorly done, many have left with missing strokes.

Rectitude (義)
Courage 勇
Benevolence 仁
Respect 礼
Honesty 诚
Honor 誉
Loyalty 忠

The character for rectitude 義 has been spited into two, 王 & 我. Instead of representing righteousness, it is "king me" which sounds more like a term from Chess. Or "The King and I", if he is a musical type.

Both respect礼& honesty诚are missing a stroke.

Any self-respecting samurai would have committed suicide long time ago to defend his reputation and honor.

These pseushido (pseudo+bushido) douchebags are such pussies.

"Prostitute"

 

This photo's caption says "My girl's 'Bitch' tattoo. So fitting"


http://www.checkoutmyink.com/tattoos/grampagravity/bitch-2

However, 妓 means "prostitute".

Why would anyone want that to be displayed on their body?

Even so, she should at least tattoo a price list underneath. It is so hard (no pun intended) to haggle, when all the blood has left the brain and gone into the boner.

Monday, October 27, 2008

"Wendy"

 

Facebook (remember the days when it was exclusive to students only?), aka. cum bucket of the internet, has so much to offer.

You can get reconnect with "friends" that you never had interest in real life, lose your privacy, get bombarded by clever data-mining advertisers, and blah blah blah...

It comes with no surprise there is a group called "CooLeSt TaTToo On FaceBook...." with this posted in it by Wayne Fright (go ahead and friendquest him):


http://photos-413.ll.facebook.com/photos-ll-sf2p/v236/165/18/624295413/n624295413_2973720_4222.jpg

Yep, it is an upside-down "Wendy".

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Enola's Tattoo in Waterworld

 

io9.com recently posted something about futuristic bad-ass tattoos, one that received much attention is on the back of Enola in Waterworld (it was a shitty movie by Kevin Costner, come to think of it, were any of Costner's movies good?).

From Engrish & Hanzi Smatter

I thought Enola was a dwarf when I first saw the movie. Perhaps that was because the camera's angle that made her head huge and shrunk her torso.



The characters on the left of the circular thing is "latitude" and "longitude" on the right. I don't know why the movie people decided to break two characters into three. It is not like they are saving any flesh space.



The characters inside of the circular part is longitude & latitude's actual coordinates.

Latitude = 27° 59' N
Longitude = 86° 56' E

Spoiler alert: it is the location of Mount Everest.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

"Leah"

 

Here is another reason why it is a bad idea to tattoo a person's name onto your own flesh:


http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A80714/high/nr1e-mes-tatouages.jpg

利娅 is the Chinese transliteration for "Leah".

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Mr. Sweet & Sour Pork

 

Meet Daniel S., aka. Mr. Sweet & Sour Pork,



According to Daniel S., this tattoo was intentional & he was "looking for something humorous, yet also an affront to those people who have supposedly 'deep' meanings in Chinese."

Although it is not incorrect, any serious foodie would know, Sweet & Sour Pork is actually written as 咕嚕肉.

A similar dish is called 酢豚 in Japan.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Audrina Patridge's Pork Fried Rice

 

Thanks to OK! magazine, Defamer, WWTDD & many others for bring this to my attention:



Ms. Audrina Patridge has recently got猪肉油煎的米 tattooed on her forearm. It is unclear if the tattoo is genuine or some kind of publicity stunt.

However the tattooed phrase is not grammatically correct. What has been tattooed is direct translation from English word-per-word to Chinese of "pork; oil fried; rice grain".

If she wanted "pork fried rice", it should be 猪肉炒饭.

Tyler Durden has summed this up:

"...White people need to knock it off with the Chinese lettering tattoos. I'm a big fan of white people and being white is terrific, but we're kind of dumb, and the overwhelming majority of us don't know how to use Chinese... God only knows WTF she thinks it means. It turns out that guy [tattooist] isn’t an expert on Chinese. Shocking, yes?"

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Like Father, Like Son

 

Over three years ago, my friend John Pasden sent me a tattoo photo he took of an Australian acquaintance. The tattoo was "Death before Dishonor" in Chinese, however the orientation of characters was reversed, therefore the youngman is proudly displaying "[I] rather to be a coward than die honorably" on his forearm.

A few days ago, I took a peek at BMEzine's tattoo gallery and saw this:


http://bmeink.com/A80127/high/npsp-henry.jpg

有其父必有其子is a Chinese idiom which means "like father, like son". Once again, the orientation of characters are reversed & the phrase is now gibberish.

His father must be really proud of his idiot son.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Wrong Chapter from Tao Te Ching

 

道德经or Tao Te Ching, is one of the oldest exemplars of classic Chinese literature. Millions, perhaps billions, of people have read it since it was first written by Lao Tzu (or Lao Zi) around 600 BC.

For some, it is considered to be the Chinese equivalent of the Holy Bible. It has formed the foundation for Chinese philosophies such as Legalism, Neo-Confucianism, and Taoism. Thus, if someone decides to get sections of Tao Te Ching tattooed, he better do some serious research.

However, this person and/or his tattooist did not:


http://www.bmeink.com/A70313/high/bmepb474982.jpg
http://www.bmeink.com/A70313/high/bmepb474981.jpg
http://www.bmeink.com/A70313/high/bmepb474980.jpg

Three photos titled with “This is one of the TAO proverbs. So far I have 88 charaters. (by Jeniffer, Liberty Tattoo's, Sacramento Calif.)” were posted in BMEzine’s gallery on March 13, 2007.

Most of the text was from Chapter 64 of Tao Te Ching, which should read:
其安易持  其未兆易谋
其脆易泮  其微易散
为之於未有  治之於未乱
合抱之木  生於毫末
九层之台  起於累土
千里之行  始於足下
民之从事  常於几成而败之
慎终如始  则无败事
However in the photo shown above, the section circled in red is actually from a completely different chapter.

Chapter 29 reads:
将欲取天下而为之，吾见其不得已。
天下神器，不可为也，不可执也。
为者败之，执者失之。
是以圣人无为，故无败；无执，故无失。
故物或行或随，或嘘或吹；
或强或羸，或载或隳。
是以圣人去甚，去奢，去泰。
The mistake would be less noticeable if he did not have the chapter title tattooed near his butt cheek.

 

 

Sunday, October 15, 2006

"This is a Tattoo" and "Fish Ball Soup"

 

It has been two years since I first started Hanzi Smatter. With almost 400 entries achieved here about poorly done tattoos, it is always interesting for me to receive emails from people who got humorous Chinese character tattoos.

The first one I got is from Andy Scott and his “This is a Tattoo” tattoo:

Hello,  

I just stumbled onto your site and I want to say that hanzismatter.com is fantastic.

I've been living in China now for just over two years, whilst my speaking and listening isn't too bad, I cannot read or write more than a few characters. I too got a tattoo here in China, but luckily I have a endless resource here to make sure the words are correct. I attached it here.

It should say 'Zhe Shi Wen Shen' or 'This is a tattoo.' I get a lot of enjoyment creating a different meaning every time someone asks what it translates to. I haven't seen any English tattoo's here, but some of the phrases that are on clothing, menu's and other signs are just as amusing as some of the ones you have written about.

I'm sure there is some poor Chinese person out there with some poorly transcribed words inked onto their skin too. But, it's great that you are shedding light to the fact that language mistakes are made all over the world, not just in English. Though it's good for a laugh.

Cheers,


Andy Scott

The second one is from Mark Pulver, and he got "Fish Ball Soup" tattooed on his leg:

Hi!

I thought you'd get a kick out of the story of a tat on my leg...

My other half and I have always found sites like engrish.com interesting, and especially Hanzi Smatter - we love seeing the mistakes you point out.

"What do you mean it says "Beef & Broccoli?? It's supposed to be Love & Happiness!"

heh.

We decided to invert the process... We figured that we would _actually_ get "beef & broccoli" inked, and then just tell people that it says "love & happiness". In the end, 99% of our friends and the people we meet would never know the difference, and we'd have a fun story to tell to those who tell us "ummm, did you know that..."

Yeah, we're goofy that way.

Since we were actually looking for beef & broccoli we went searching for Asian menus online - we figured that would be a good source for a valid translation. In the process we found http://mrhowontonhouse.com/ which offered up a LOT more than just B&B!

Now, being the head goofball, I noticed "fish ball soup" and glommed onto it REAL quick. On top of it, I came up with a back-story where I would tell people that the characters represent the last line of an old story that talks about love, happiness, relationships, children, all the things that have been held important for thousands of years by the Asian cultures. :)

With the symbols and a story in hand, I asked a friend of a friend of mine at work to verify the translation. He did and also re-wrote the characters to be clearer. I made a phone call to my tat guy and I was off to the ink shop. The end result is here:

http://www.midiwall.com/tattoo/pics/20060902_Tattoo_01.jpg

I understand that the last character is loosely translated as "broth only" - I have an alternate writing where the last character is "with noodles" as well. :)

It's all in good fun... we don't mean anything rude or insulting by it, it's more about having fun with a poke back to the people that _don't_ do the research before they get tattoo's.

Keep up the fun!


Mark Pulver
"The Fish Ball Soup" guy

 

 

Saturday, August 26, 2006

"Lame"

 

Reader Robert found this photo posted in one of Lostcherry.com’s pages and would like to know what the phrase meant.


http://www.lostcherry.com/viewimage.php?u=163773&albumid=0&i=1420980233

The top character太means “very, too, much; big; extreme”, and the bottom one屁means “break wind; fart; buttocks”.

In Chinese slang, especially in internet lingo,太屁 means “lame” or "pathetic".

Update: August 27, 2006 - According to the original website, the tattoo is supposed to be "fat ass".

If that is true, the top character should be大, not太.

Tuesday, August 8, 2006

Jon Stewart Made Fun of Condoleezza Rice's Tattoo

 

I caught a glimpse of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart tonight, where he made fun of Condoleezza Rice's Chinese character tattoo.


Videos: 4.12 MB Divx, 2.39 MB Windows Media, and mirror

This is after the Daily Show aired a clip showing Condoleezza Rice tried to use a Chinese phrase危机to describe American's war in Iraq (or terrorism in general?) during a news conference in August 6, 2006.

By the way, the term Condoleezza Rice used does not actually mean "danger+opportunity=crisis". My good friend Mark Swofford at Pinyin.info has posted an essay by Victor H. Mair on this misperception.

The character猪on Condoleezza's shoulder means "pig".

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Evil Angel

 

This person has posted two tattoos done by Melissa Mesimer of Ghetto Inks in BMEzine’s gallery (June 26th, 2006).

One is called “Evil Angel” and the other is titled “Burning Rain”.


http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A60626/high/bmepb293004.jpg
Somehow the first character邪of邪恶天使has been separated into two characters, which (are 牙tooth) and阝（a partial that looks like an “ear”).

For those who are curious about the striations below the hands in the photo, those are stretch marks. I am not sure if the photos linked above were from a female tattooer or a very large man with gynecomastia.

 

 

Monday, June 19, 2006

Aggressively Smooth

 

http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A60612/high/bmepb286196.jpg
http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A60612/high/bmepb286194.jpg
This photo dated Jun 12, 2006 in BMEzine’s gallery by ViciousVen (aka. Jimbo according to his stats on BMEzine and MySpace) had this caption:

My Friend Joe
Secong Victim (top tattoo only)
(by ViciousVen)

First of all, I think ViciousVen really meant to say was “second victim” instead of “secong”.

Secondly, why are the orientations of these two characters猛and俐rotated?

Neglectful Svetlyo?

 

A tattooist named Svetlyo of Eclipse Tattoo in Ruse, Bulgaria, did these two tattoos.


http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A60612/high/bmepb285141.jpg


http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A60612/high/bmepb285140.jpg

In both cases, the characters circled in red, 运,权and 惑are missing strokes. I wonder if they were done incorrectly due to tattoo template flaws or a neglectful tattooist.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

"Mandarin Lettering"

 

Every time Shannon Larratt updates his BMEzine.com gallery with user submitted tattoos, I would get some great laughs and then followed by shaking my head.

Today Cory Ward of Sinful Skin Tattoo in McMinnville,TN, has submitted this work of his with title, "Mandarin Lettering".

By the way, there is no such thing as "Mandarin Lettering". Two main groups of spoken Chinese, not written Chinese, are Mandarin and Cantonese. While Mainland China uses a Simplified system, Traditional Chinese is more accepted worldwide (more).




Since I could not identify the last character after道 and 安, I decide to turn the photo upside down, and guess what:




It is a crappy 極.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

"Wilson"

 

http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A60318/high/bmepb238792.jpg

This tattoo is Chinese transliteration of “Uriah Wilson” by Isaac Villarreal in Lytle, Texas.

I personally have never met anyone that is named “Uriah”, only “Uria”, therefore I don’t know if the three characters on the left side are the correct or acceptable translation.

But I have met plenty of “Wilson”, and that second character in威尔逊is definitely incorrect. It has been rotated 90 degrees clockwise.

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Courtesy Phrase Tattoo

 

As an old-fashioned type of man, I often do little things like opening doors for ladies as a sign of courtesy. Of course, sometimes the women would show their appreciation with a simple “thank you”.

What if the person who did the good deed is not an English speaker?



http://is2.okcupid.com/users/112/26/11302762098146592552/p1122791055.jpg
Get yourself a Chinese courtesy phrase tattooed on your leg. Problem solved.

多谢means "many thanks".

Perhaps her other leg says “come again”.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Getting Fucked

 

The young lady bearing this tattoo by Juan at Starlight Tattoo in Belleville, NJ, probably thought no one would ever guess what the two characters meant.  

http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A60417/high/bmepb255095.jpg

The top character操normally means “conduct, run, control, manage”, but in Chinese slang, it is the equivalent of “fuck”. The bottom character appears to be a botched你which means “you”.

It must be nice to express one’s angst via a foreign language, unfortunately she is one ultimately got “fucked”.

"Beauty"

 

larger view

What is more embarrassing than discovering your Chinese character tattoo美 does not mean what you thought it meant and it is done upside down?

Monday, February 20, 2006

Mirrored Freedom

 

Elena has emailed me these two photos being displayed in a tattoo parlor in Spain. Obviously no one at the shop has realized the photos are shown mirrored.

Let’s hope these are just photograph errors and the actual tattoos were done correctly.

自由"Freedom"


http://flickr.com/photos/girlinblack/102253072/


I don't know what 乔瓦尼 is, but it could be someone's name.


http://flickr.com/photos/girlinblack/102253054/

Friday, February 10, 2006

Antelope

 

(full size)

Reader Andre emailed this photo of a local tattoo shop's display case in Leipzig, Germany.

The tattoo suppose to be 羚羊,  which means "antelope", but somehow the first character has then split into two partials.

"Knife Through Loss"

 

http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A60123/high/bmepb211706.jpg

This untitled submission to BMEzine.com's kanji tattoo gallery only had caption of "Tattoo done on Ian. by Tracie at MARKED FOR LIFE. Ossett. West Yorkshire."

The first character appears to be刀(knife). The next two 通过means "pass through". The last two 损失is "loss".

The faux-brush calligraphy is terrible.

"Forever Lost"

 

http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A51216/high/bmepb183813.jpg

If this tattooed phrase would be translated into English as "character-per-word", it would say "Forever Lost" or "Eternally Lost". Aside from the terrible calligraphy, the phrase is grammatically incorrect when it is read as Chinese.

 

 

"Ding Dong"

 

When I saw this photo, the first two questions popped into my mind are:

1. Is the witch dead?

2. Are the fries done?

The four-character phrase (circled in red) on this young man's left forearm is the literal translation that means "the sound of ding-dong".

"Gratitude"

 

http://kingpinstudio.com/albums/Chris/kanji.jpg

I hope this tattooist has posted a mirrored photo rather than a mirrored tattoo.

恩means "gratitude" and "kindness".

Friday, October 21, 2005

Whole-Hearted Devotion

 

http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A51022/high/bmepb152472.jpg

诚心诚意is an old Chinese idiom that meant "in all sincerity", "with one's whole heart", or "whole-hearted devotion".

Ironically, neither the tattooist nor the client has devoted enough effort to make sure the tattoo was done correctly.

 

 

Thursday, October 6, 2005

Excrement

 

http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A51003/high/bmegl144166.jpg

Granted the character was done correctly, but the question still remains:

What is the purpose of having粪(excrement; feces) tattooed on one’s leg?

Thursday, October 6, 2005

"Forever Family Reputation"

 

The entire phrase 永远家名誉was tattooed upside down, plus the character 名 is missing a dot.

Tuesday, October 4, 2005

"Mountain Bike"

 

http://www.oma-sk.tripod.com/Tattoo_-_vaden.jpg

单车means "bicycle" and 过山单车 means "mountain bike". Perhaps both the client and tattooist had too many concussions resulted from mountain biking accidents.

 

 

Sunday, September 25, 2005

"Mommy"

 

http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A50925/high/bmegl138540.jpg

妈咪is the Chinese version of English word "mommy". In this tattoo, the second character 咪 has been rotated 90 degrees clockwise.

"Exotic Atmosphere"

 

http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A50321/high/bmegl036049.jpg

I really hope this was just a photo error, but I doubt it. If they are done correctly, 异国情调would mean "exotic atmosphere".

 

 

Thursday, September 8, 2005

 

http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A50905/high/bmegl123947.jpg
The English word “screw” bears many meanings include “a rod-shaped piece with a spiral groove and a slotted or recessed head designed to be inserted into material by rotating (as with a screwdriver ) and used for fastening pieces of solid material together”, and in vulgar slang, “an act of sexual intercourse”.

The slang term “screw this” usually has meaning equivalent to “forget about it”. Unfortunately English slang often does not direct translate very well contextually into Chinese or Japanese.

This young man probably wanted to express his angst of “screw this” in Chinese（螺丝钉这）, yet did not have the patience to verify if the contextual translation was correct or not. His tattoo literally means “insert screw-nail here”, which is something that comes with furniture assembly instruction.

Or he could be a loyal employee of IKEA corporation.

 

 

 

tattoo_baojimenglonggongxionghuanfulei2.jpg

Anyone who has ever stepped into a Chinese restaurant would know there are twelve Chinese zodiac. Apparently in the world this guy is living in, there are only nine. One of the zodiac has then replaced with “leopard” （豹） and the rest are random mirrored characters mixed with Chinese and Japanese. Of course, he did not believe his friends when they pointed them out to him, until now...

 

 

Saturday, May 28, 2005

Eternal Love

 

Reader Neko emails:

"One of my friends from high school recently got this tattoo. She claims it means 'Eternal Love'. I found 'Eternal' in my books, but could not find anything even closely resembling her version of love. Is it a translation I simply haven't seen before? I did end up finding a 'flash' version of this same thing online somewhere, but since I only saw it once, and it was flash.. I'm having a hard time believing. I'd love to get your input on it. :)"

The top character 永means "long, perpetual, eternal, forever". The bottom character 疼even though sometimes it is used to describe "dote, doting", but most often it means "aches, pains, sore".

Morals of the Story: Buyers Beware.