• ABCDE@lemmy.world
    254·
    20 days ago

    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.

  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
    1911·
    20 days ago

    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!”

    • Clbull@lemmy.world
      8·
      19 days ago

      I mean considering the fact that he flashed himself to a 16 year old girl without any warning, I’d say that tattoo was well deserved.

  • undergroundoverground@lemmy.world
    168·
    20 days ago

    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.

    • bricklove@midwest.socialEnglish
      691·
      20 days ago

      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

    • 😈MedicPig🐷BabySaver😈@lemmy.world
      211·
      19 days ago

      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 it works out fine.

      I got that tattoo because I actually work with “blood and guts” as a Paramedic.

    • Unbecredible@lemm.eeEnglish
      31·
      20 days ago

      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.

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    119·
    20 days ago

    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.”

  • BudgetBandit@sh.itjust.works
    98·
    20 days ago

    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”

    • ZeffSyde@lemmy.world
      29·
      20 days ago

      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.

      • Dragonstaff@leminal.spaceEnglish
        8·
        19 days ago

        I met someone with a “Man shall not lie with another man” tattoo.

        1. That verse is literally the previous chapter to the “don’t get tattoos” verse. Why did he think one was important enough to get tattooed while ignoring the other?

        2. He really chose to get that tattooed?!

        There was no way a conversation with this guy would go well, so I’m going to be stuck with these questions forever.

      • QualifiedKitten@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        20 days ago

        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.

          • QualifiedKitten@lemmy.worldEnglish
            4·
            19 days ago

            Sorry, lol, that was definitely not my intention! I’ve definitely heard about the “no tattoos” thing before, especially for those following Judaism, but I’d never read the relevant text before, so it definitely surprised me. I may have to ask my sister about it, since that’s definitely her area of study.

    • BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee
      3·
      19 days ago

      I went out raging when i was younger and i met a girl and a tattoo artist and we got shitfaced together. At some point we wanted to get a dumb ass tattoo. We both had a lot of tattoos already, so it was just one for the collection. The artist was originally from japan, but he kept saying that his japanese isn’t that great. We still insisted on getting some japanese letters. He tattooed her what he thought: enjoyer of garlic bread translated to, and i wanted one that said garlic boy. We came up with it individually because we talked a lot about garlic bread and one of my favourite bands is garlic boys. And i thought it’s funny. She got her tattoo, but the guy was so fucked up that he fell into a coma after that. I didn’t get my garlic boy tattoo, and i thought to get it anyway, but it would never be as funny as getting it from a drunk japanese dude who spoke very bad japanese.

  • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
    96·
    20 days ago

    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.

  • Aggravationstation@feddit.uk
    88·
    20 days ago

    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.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
    67·
    20 days ago

    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”

    • lugal@lemmy.world
      371·
      20 days ago

      Even the premise: why would you want a Christian message in Japanese?

      • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
        18·
        20 days ago

        Some guesses: it looks cool, it makes people curious to ask “what’s that supposed to mean?”, the dude was a christian otaku

      • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
        3·
        19 days ago

        Apparently Christianity is about 1.5% of the population, which is almost 2 million people. In some areas you can see signs on sheds talking about Jesus or life after death, etc. A friend of mine knew a local older lady who had one on her shed and asked her if she put it there and said that it just appeared one morning. She wasn’t Christian but thought a sign talking about god was kind of nice so she just left it up.

        Guess if the local sect can’t convince people to hang signs they’re willing to do some guerrilla jesus-ing. This one says “Jesus is the son of god.”

        • lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de
          61·
          19 days ago

          Jesus is the son of god

          I always hated this sentiment. I don’t think sons should automatically inherit their fathers’ sins. Jesus seemed to be a mostly cool dude, albeit with his own human flaws (including the common blindness to his father’s abusive nature) and it really doesn’t seem fair to lump him in with his dad.

        • lugal@lemmy.world
          3·
          19 days ago

          I expected even more Christians in Japan but there is a difference between Christians in Japan who adopt Christian messages into the Japanese language and a Westerner (I assume) going to Japan to get a tattoo. If I want a Christian message tattooed, I would want it in a language I understand or maybe one that is significant for Christian culture like Latin or Old Greek or maybe Hebrew. But why in Japanese?

  • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
    52·
    20 days ago

    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.

      • Sweetpeaches69@lemmy.world
        18·
        20 days ago

        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.

        • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
          9·
          20 days ago

          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.

        • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
          2·
          20 days ago

          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?

          • howrar@lemmy.ca
            2·
            19 days ago

            So the characters are still words, right?

            Most likely yes. All characters in Chinese are defined jointly by the way it’s written, the pronunciation, and meaning. You can’t invent new characters like you would a new English word and have something that can be read out loud because there’s no system for deriving pronunciation from the written character itself.

            I say most likely because there are still some characters that are phonetic in that their meaning is just the sound, but these don’t cover the whole spectrum of possible sounds in the language as far as I know. They also wouldn’t look as nice in tattoo form since they all use the same radical.

            • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
              3·
              19 days ago

              I’m aware, it was just the first English name and Spanish word I could think of that sounded similar for the example.

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
        8·
        20 days ago

        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.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
    45·
    20 days ago

    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.

      • jcg@halubilo.social
        32·
        19 days ago

        Seems like it. I suppose it’s an honest mistake to make, she (or her PR team) put the Kanji for “seven” and “ring” (but also more generally means circular or loop or wheel), but Kanji when combined doesn’t always mean what you’d expect it to mean. In this case those two Kanji together is a noun meaning charcoal grill. Kanji combinations can be highly logical, where their standalone meanings come together to a very sensible combined meaning. But sometimes they don’t make much sense and the reasoning for the combined meaning is lost to time.

        But come on, man… Just search for it online or open a dictionary before you permanently write something on your body.

        • aivoton@sopuli.xyz
          131·
          19 days ago

          It’s bit of both. 七輪 can mean seven rings, but more often it refers to the grill. Just as 五輪 can mean 5 rings, but it also means the olympics.

  • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
    32·
    20 days ago

    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.

    • rcuv@programming.dev
      21·
      19 days ago

      In Chinese, 安 by itself can mean secure. I think.

      edit: it can also be a surname. but still seems a bit strange to me to have that character by itself.

      • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
        5·
        19 days ago

        Yep, Chinese like to use single character to mean something, but the word generally have positive meaning so it’s used in name as well. Though i’m not sure if it’s surname, never heard anyone with that name, given name though yeah.