Let the Laughter Begin

Not only this is a tattoo with terrible penmanship, but all the characters are mixed between Simplified and Traditional version. The second character from the right 量 is upside down, and last character 功 is wrongly written. Here is what critiques say about this "artwork":

Randall: "Yikes!"

Angela: "Wah! Do I really need to count? This is such a horrible tattoo! I don't know why this 'phrase' is made up with both traditional and simplified characters. Second, the second and third last characters are up-side-down, and the second and last characters are actually the same character. I have no idea what the hell this tatto is supposed to tell people "Speed something something smart power?'."

Brendan: "Oh, man. I can't even tell what a couple of those are supposed to be. Also, it looks like it was colored in using a marker or something."

Eden: "Man, there's just too many errors. I feel sorry for that guy..."

速度 = speed, velocity
权力 (權力) = power, right, authority
宗 = lineage, ancestry; ancestor, clan
智识 (智識) = wisdom, knowledge, intelligence
量 = measure, quantity, capacity
功 = achievement, merit, good result

Confession of a Tattoo Artist

From reader/tattoo artist "Devin":

"Here is a great question: Why there are so many fucked up kanji tattoos?

I have been a tattoo artist for 8 yrs. and will tell you why. A kanji is the cheapest thing that you can get at the tattoo parlor. For the most part they require no thought and are chosen on impulse right before getting tattooed. Most of the people who get these tattoos don’t care what it is, they just want to be "cool".

Anyone serious about doing nice Japanese style tattoos either A) don’t get kanji’s, or B) do some research first. Most of the pictures you have [posted on Hanzi Smatter] are from people who should have never gotten tattooed period.

The tattoo artists don’t care what the kanji means because they don’t care what you put on your body, especially when you are getting the cheapest tattoo in the shop. Most tattoo artists can’t read Japanese so how do they know what that stuff says, all they know is that you’re sure that this is what you want on your body for the rest of your life.

Just for fun, I am designing a tattoo right now and the guy gave me the kanji's he wanted:

The first one is earth,
the next three are Aquarius,
and the last is sheep.

Is that right?"

Devin is correct and his tattoo design is also correct.

土 = soil, earth; items made of earth
水瓶座 = Aquarius
羊 = sheep, goat

"Knowing is only Half of the Battle"

From reader "Jarrad B.":

"Hey Tian, congratulations on all of the recognition and review of your Kanji/Hanzi translation website. It's an incredibly nice thing to do for some people who may have gotten Kanji tattoos or other semi-permanent markings. I myself am not as sure as I'd like to be that the tattoo that I got means what it should. I got it under the assumption that it meant "mind", or something akin to that. I'm hoping you can help clarify that for me. Thanks."

The characters in the tattoo are correctly done, except the left one is being used in wrong context.

Even though 知 does mean "know, perceive, comprehend", and in Japanese 知力 does translate to "intellectual power", but it only referring to the ablility to understand.

The more appropriate one should be 智力, in this case it would be referring to the complete comprehension.

"Elevated Grace"

From reader "Chris B.":

"For your amusement, I have attached a photo of my boss' tattoo. He thought it would mean 'Sarah', his wife's name. My girlfriend (she is Chinese) informed me that the first means 'more/better' and the second means 'elegant'. The second one is found in women's names a lot though."

Acording to about.com, the correct phonetic translation of the name "Sarah" to Chinese is:

莎拉

The two characters tattooed meant "more elegant" or "elevated grace", and I don't know if they are phonetically closer to "Sarah" in Japanese pronounciation.

更雅

Oversimplified "Dragon"

The tattoo above suppose to be the simplified version of the character "dragon". Except the tattoo artist has decide to put the "dragon" on another level of cultural diet, oversimplified it by neglecting an important dot.

Here is the correct "dragon":

Simplifed version: 龙
Traditional version: 龍

ps. thanks to tattoo artist (or parlors) like this, this site will never run out of material...

Mystery Coffin Carrier

I came across ths tattoo and it is obviously that he wanted "coffin carrier" or "the undertaker" to be tattooed. but I have never seen the middle character before. Wondering if I have missed something, I contacted John Pasden for a second opinion.

John checked his big fat Chinese dictionary, but it didn't have that character. His first impression was that it was supposed to be 榭, but that doesn't make sense either. He then looked up "coffin" in a Japanese dictionary. It's written 棺 or 柩.

To conclude, neither John nor I recognize the middle character, especially when the correct way to write is:

棺材佬

Stripe Less Tiger

From reader "Simon":

"Hey Tian, I viewed your site and found something that disturbed me. I have a tattoo of what I thought was meant to mean tiger. What does it need to actually mean tiger? Thanks, -Simon"

It is my regret to inform Simon that the tattoo he has is wrongly written and it has a horizontal stroke that is missing.

The correct character is this 寅.

If the character was written correctly, it means "to respect, reverence; respectfully; 3rd terrestrial branch".

By the way, the character shown above by itself does not mean tiger, it is only tiger when it is combined with 虎.

"Do Nothing Hero" or "No Fear Warrior"

From reader "David P.":

"Dear Tian,

A friend of mine passed along your Hanzi Smatter link. It's a pretty good gig; a bit of a much needed public service.

I live in Shanghai and after five years have come up with what I see at the perfect Chinese character tattoo that embodies philosophy toward life. I've hesitated to do it because it just feels like the whole Asian character tattoos thing is just played out, though the idea
behind it was a bit of a goof on all those 'strength', 'wisdom', 'fearless' and name tattoos.

Anyway, I just wanted to share it with you to get your impression. When I show it to my Chinese friends, they have a good laugh.

Keep up the good work.

-D"

I had to admit after seeing so many bad examples of Chinese characters in media and tattoo designs, I first thought David has made a mistake of choosing two characters that sounded same with complete different meanings.

The tattoo design above is pronounced in Mandarin Chinese as:

無 (wu)
為 (wei)
俠 (xia)

Matter of fact, I even emailed him back suggesting that the middle character should be 畏 (also pronouced as "wei"), which means "fear", and his tattoo design would be:

無畏俠

which means "No Fear Warrior".

After a few more correspondence, I finally realized that the meaning of David's tattoo design was based on a Taoist concept of "when you do nothing, you have done everything".

"Giant Root"

From reader "Jack S.":

"This is the print from a t-shirt, wondering what it really says. Thanks."

The character on the left means "large" or "giant", and the character on the right means "root" or "foundation". Therefore, if you are reading it as Chinese, it would mean "giant root". But in Japanese, it means "large penis".

巨
根

"Sacrificed for a Righteous Cause"

From reader "Daniel S.":

"Hey, how you doing? Came across your site,which is very interesting. Wondered if you could do me a favour and translate the characters on my fore arm. A few Chinese lads have told me it means roughly what its supposed to, just hoped you could give me your translation? Thanks"

All the characters are correct and the Chinese translation is "sacrificed for a righteous cause", or the Japanese equivalent of "even if it was unsuccessful, it was for a good cause".

As a word of caution, this phrase does have some negative meaning as well. It is often used to describe Japanese kamikaze pilots go into their suicidal battle.

不 = no, not
成 = accomplish
功 = task, merit, achievement
便 = ordinary, plain, convenient, handy, easy, then, so, thus, to relieve oneself
仁 = humane, righteous

"Dragon", "Forever", and "Tiger"

From reader "Andre":

"First of all I would like to say that your website is AMAZING! I'm Brazilian, and very fond of Japanese and Chinese culture. I intend to tattoo some kanji, but NOW I think it's wiser to ask you first, if you could be kind and CHECK if the following kanji really mean what I believe they mean. The first kanji is the "dragon":



The second and third are supposed to mean "forever":



Finally, the last one is the kanji for "tiger":



Are they right? Thanks in advance!!!"


The "dragon" character "Andre" has sent me is a Japanese simplification. To most Chinese (and other Asians), it does not have a significant meaning. Therefore if you had that tattoo on you, you might have to explain to a non-Japanese what it meant.

The traditional version of "dragon" is this: 龍

Word of advice: always get tattoos in traditional version of Kanji or Hanzi. Not only it is more beautiful and classic, also it is because only Mainland Chinese use the simplified version, and the rest are using traditional version.

The bottom character in "forever" is also a simplified version, the traditional version is this: 遠

The "tiger" character is wrongly written. It is missing a horizontal stroke, and here is the corrected version: 寅

The character itself actually means "3-5 a.m.; 3rd earthly branch" if it is not combined with "tiger" which is this: 虎

"I Strive for a Non-Existent Ethnic Group"

From reader "Angela S.":

"Hey Tian, I come across with a photo of Marcus Camby. I'm sure he means well when he gets that tattoo. But for me as a native Chinese speaker, I feel I wouldn’t be able to understand the tattoo without some explanation. I think non-native Chinese speakers have to understand that some English phases just don't translate well into Chinese."

I agree with Angela S. on this issue. Usually the character 族 is used in Chinese referring to a certain ethnic group. In this case, without any detailed explanation, Camby's tattoo means he is a member of the 勉 ethnic group, which is nonexistent.

Fancy Backward Nails

Oh my, those are some fancy nails you have got there. Too bad they are all backwards.

祿 德 氣 美 英 永 真 平

Airbrush "Secure"

The horizontal bar on top of 妥 was an indicator as "this way up" in the template to prevent the potential embarrasment of having something upside down. It was not meant to be painted or tattooed on. Obviously the artist did not know that. Luckily, it was only an airbrush art not a real tattoo.

Tattoo Flash "Qi"

I was at Border's bookstore yesterday and saw the photo above in one of the tattoo magazines. Even though the writting for 奇 is correct, but I am not convinced about its meaning.

Like myself and several readers have mentioned before, Japanese Kanji and Chinese Hanzi share similar characters but meaning and pronounciations are different.

In this case, 奇 may mean "mysterious" in Japanese; but in Chinese it would mean "strange". Therefore whoever decides to choose this tattoo must bear that in mind.

"Did you know 'gullible' is not in the dictionary?"

Often I receive emails from fans giving me tips about hanzi/kanji related news. I really appreciate all the fans for their support. What were really interesting are email correspondents I had with “William D.” this afternoon:

William D.: “Hey, I just saw your website and thought your might appreciate this news story about a disgruntled tattoo artist. Which just goes to show you that if you're going to have something permanently marked on your body you better know what its. Even though it's pretty funny... doing it intentionally is pretty damn mean. Check out the story here: http://www.soufoaklin.com/tattooartist.html”

Me: “Dear William, Did you know "Souf Oaklin fo' Life" is a fake spoof site? All the articles in there are FAKE. They are like the popular spoof site, The Onion.”

William D.: “By the way, I forgot to mention, you can Google for the guys name, Andy Sakai, and there's a few more news articles about him. In particular: He got 5 years and apparently still hasn't learned his lesson."

Me: *silence*

William D.: “Hey, I looked around a little bit more and noticed this: Souf Oaklin fo' Life! is a satirical newspaper published by Wooo Media. Oh well, another urban legend. Sorry about that, still kind of funny though :)”

Me: “No problem. I enjoyed the stories. Thanks for sending them in.”

Ex-Girlfriend's Tattoo Meaning

From reader "Bart R":

"Hi, I saw your website, with translations of Japanese/Chinese tattoos. Amazing what people allow tattoo artists to write on their bodies :-) Now I got a little curious, what the tattoo of my ex-girlfriend means. The artist said that this is the translation of her name ("Maaike", in English pronounced as "My-ke"). Can you tell me if the artist was right, or she has major gibberish on her body? If so, feel free to post on your website ;-) thanks in advance!"

The character 麦 itself means "wheat", "barley", or "oats" in both Chinese and Japanese. Some occasions, it represents a Chinese surname. Phonetically, it is pronounced as "M-ai" in Chinese.

Here is a link gives more information and the Traditional version is written this way.

Therefore to answer your question, it is technically not gibberish. But it would be recognized by Chinese or Japanese as "wheat" if there is no further explanation.

After I replied to "Bart R", he emailed me back with:

"Dear Tian, Thank you very much! I called her, and now she's finally sure of the meaning of the sign. "Thanks" from her too! She's glad she doesn't have "Crazy diarrhea" on her chest :-) Thanks again."

Did I get what I paid for?

From reader "cloverleaf315w":

"I have three characters down my spine, they are supposed to mean 'wild, powerful, and fearless'. Can you tell me that's what I really paid for. I got these done in Tennessee by a local guy everyone goes to. It wasn't my best choice of tattoos I've put on my body, (slightly intoxicated)"

After I done some research, here is what I found:

The top one 野 means "wild", the second one 恐 means "afraid", and the last one 強 means "strength".

"White Wrist" or "Naughtiness"

I am a bit confused about this tattoo. If the characters are translated individually, one means "wrist" and the other means "white". Except, if they are translated as a phrase, in Chinese, it would mean "wrist is white", and "naughtiness" in Japanese.

腕 = wrist (Chinese); arm (Japanese)
白 = white, snowy, empty, blank, bright, clear, plain, pure, gratuitous (Chinese); white (Japanese)

"Crazy Diarrhea"

* Photo(s) have been removed on behalf of Ms. Naomi Chaney's (owner of the "crazy diarrhea" tattoo) Request *

The original photo can be viewed at BMEzine.com:
http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A30402/high/gmrjh83p.jpg

I am speechless...

Chinese translation:
狂 = crazy
瀉 = to flow out, diarrhea

Japanese translation:
狂 = mania
瀉 = decanting

"Power Piglet"

I have started to verify all characters in two versions (Traditional and Simplified) of Chinese and Japanese, after reader Eden Li's suggestion. Chinese (Hanzi) and Japanese (Kanji) share some characters, except meanings and writings may vary.

Tattoo above still means "power pig" in both Chinese and Japanese.

力 = power, force
豚 = piglet

sources:
AltaVista
JDIC
Wikipedia (Chinese & Japanese)
Worldlingo
Zhongwen
Unihan

"Motherly Beast Blessing"

What exactly is "motherly beast blessing"?

The first two characters are terribly done, especially consider the middle character is a badly botched simplification of beast, 獸.

Frankly, I believe my cat could have done better in her litter box while covering up her waste than this pathetic attempt.

母 = mother
獸 = animal, beast
祉 = blessings

"Barely" Naked

This silly girl wanted to have "naked" tattooed on her lower abdomen, but the tattoo artist forgot to finish the job. By not putting the last dab of ink on her, he/she has left her fully "exposed" to be the butt of all jokes. Or "Barely" Naked, no pun intended.

赤 = bare, red
裸 = exposed

"Place" T-shirt

I saw this at a local pizza deli during lunch today. The first character 处 means "place" and the second character is a partial. I don't know if they have any significant meanings in Japanese.

Reader Brendan points out "There's no way that can be anything other than a botched 处女."

Oh by the way, 处女 means "virgin".

"Uncontainable Circus" by Jeff Falk

(larger view: paperart_uncontainablecircus.jpg)

Jeff Falk, a local artist, has several piecers of his art work showing at a local Border's bookstore. This piece is titled "Uncontainable Circus".

On the left upper corner, there is a red paper strip with a very traditional Chinese phrase meaning "invite wealth, receive treasure", or loosely translated to "good fortune" on it:

招財進寶

It is very hard to judge the correctness on a piece of visual artwork. I would like to think it was not artist's linguistic ignorance, rather his intension to place the Chinese paper strip upside-down to serve an artistic purpose.

招 = recruit, invite
財 = wealth
進 = receive
寶 = treasure

"Prestigious Blinds"

I truly hope this person got this as a phonetic translation of the name "William". The correct phonetic translation for "William" is:

威廉

Since his 簾 and 廉 both sounded the same, the confusion is understandable. The problem lies in the differences of characters' meanings.

廉 = cheap, bargain price
簾 = blinds, window curtains

and

威 = prestigious

But, the irony does not stop there. This tattoo belongs to "Ray Ray", the leader of "National Socialist Afrian Worker's Party".

"Potential making an Effort Essence"

This is an example of randomly choose four characters and place them to appear as Chinese idioms. Even though there are fonts offers hollow-style, but rarely in Chinese writing, characters' strokes are hollowed out. By doing so, it symbolizes lack of confidence, unstable, or superficial.

勢 = situation, influence
勉 = strive, encourage
性 = nature, disposition, gender (depends on context)
精 = essence, concentrated

"Vegetarian World Excessively"?

素 = raw, simple, pure, or vegetarian （depends on context)
世 = world, era, generation
太 = very, too, excessively

Even if this person would like to proclaim a world or a lifestyle of simplicity or vegetarianism, the tattoo of random characters is way too hard for anyone to understand.

"Real Melon Knows Men"?

The four characters can be translated as following:

真 = true or real
瓜 = melon
智 = wisdom or intelligence
男 = man or male

I guess she wants everyone know that she got a smart melon on her shoulders and will not fooled by men. But not smart enough to realize the tattoo she got is complete gibbrish.

Ambiguous Hanzi Tattoo - Case Study 3

"Not a Strength Trap"? What the hell does that mean? Does he want everyone to know that his right arm is not as strong as the left one? Perhaps he was a victim of Poliomyelitis and did not get his vaccine in time when he was a child?

莫 = not, lack of
力 = force, strength, power
羅 = snare, trap

Ambiguous Hanzi Tattoo - Case Study 2

I am very curious about why people would randomly select three Chinese characters and tattoo them on.

Here is another example of poorly done tattoo. The top character does not even exist in Chinese characters, and it is completely made up to be look similar to Chinese. The second and third characters are fine, even though I am not impressed with the penmanship, but at least they are are correct and have meanings.

夢 = dream or wish
智 = knowledge or wisdom

Ambiguous Hanzi Tattoo - Case Study 1

I have been staring at these four characters for a while now. I don't know what the person wanted the tattoo to represent. The only way to interpret it is to go character by character:

子 = child, son, seed, offspring, egg, pellet, or bullet (depends on context).
手 = hand.
術 = proceed, method, or technique.
流 = flow, smooth, fluent, or drift (depends on context).

The closest definition I can come up with is: "smooth technique of hand to achieve seeds". It sounds like this dude enjoy "polish his own knob" a lot.

Regardless, the direction of the characters is reversed.

More Bad Chinese Tattoos Than I Can Count

Reader Yan has emailed me her collection of bad Chinese tattoos. I almost had a heart attack seeing such large collection. To make things simple, I have overlooked all the badly needled "love (愛)", "strong or healthy (健)", and "peaceful or serenity (安)". But some eye sores deserve to be picked at and made fun of.

Many bad tattoos,
yet so little time,
woe is I.

Mormon Chinese Tee - 摩門教中文衫

The Church of Latter Day Saint (aka Mormons 摩門教) has been doing its "Choose the Right" campaign started as far back as I can remember, perhaps in the early 90's.

This is the first time I have seen Mormon t-shirts with its message in Chinese. Even though the character 選 （simplified version: 选) does mean "choose" and 義 (simplified version: 义) translates as "righteousness". But when the phrase has 正 added into it, the meaning has then changed to "Choose the Justice".

ps. the calligraphy on the t-shirts are terrible.

Vintage T's (老式T恤） at Palmer Cash

A tip from reader Chad led me to Palmer Cash, a website is specialized in selling vintage （老式) styled T-shirts.

This particular shirt titled "For Good Luck, Kiss My Ass" has two identical characters on it. 佛 means "Buddha". At least these characters are facing correct direction and have all the strokes at right places.

佛教 = Buddhism
佛教徒 = Buddhist(s)
和尚 = Buddhist monk(s)
尼姑 = Buddhist nun(s)

T-shirt found at Urban Outfitters 都市服裝

I saw this t-shirt for sale at Urban Outfitters (都市服裝）. The character 彩 in the Chinese caption is reversed. The phrase 好彩 is used to describe a good performance, and in Cantonese, it means "lucky".

好 = good
彩 = color or brilliant

Hanzi Stickers Spotted at Oktoberfest - 在德國丰收節看到的漢字貼紙

The city of Tempe, Arizona has hosted its annual Oktoberfest this weekend near north of its downtown area. Other than the typical beer and food stands, there were small shop tents setup everywhere to sell varity of goods. I stopped in a tent that sells stickers and t-shirts, and spotted these two gems:




This one (貴, simplified version: 贵) suppose to mean "expensive", but the translation differs.




And this one (孚) should mean "trust", but obviously the sticker's maker does not think that way.

Here is the entire list of them: oktoberfest2004_chinese_stickers.jpg

"I am stupid enough to think this tattoo looks cool" - 我傻到认为这个文身很酷

This is a fantastic story published in UK's Metro newspaper about a boy with his badly done Chinese tattoo. He wanted the tattoo to say "Love, Honor, and Obey", instead he got "At the end of the day, this is an ugly boy".

Henna Hanzi Mistakes - 無刺花的中文錯別字

(larger view: henna_lg.jpg)

I saw this advertisement for Henna in a local head shop. I could not resist but to take a photograph of it. Out of the 42 hanzi, there are 14 mistakes：

1. 忠 means "loyal", not "honesty(誠實 or simplified version: 诚实)".
2. 礼 (traditional version: 禮) means "ritual" or "etiquette", not "thanks (謝 or simplified version: 谢)".
3. 治 means "to cure", not "peace (和平)".
4. 雌 means "female", not "bitch (母豿 or simplified version: 母狗)
5. 弹 (traditional version: 彈） means "to strike", "bounced off from", or "bullet", not "musician (音樂家 or simplified version: 音乐家).
6. 才means "talent", but it is gibbrish on the board.
7. 謠 (simplified version: 谣) means "to lie", not "singer".
8. 俳 even though it does have the equivalent meaning of "actor/actress", usually it is used to referring Japanese Geisha (花妓 or "flower prostitute").
9. 虎 means tiger, or sometimes 寅虎. The character on the poster is missing a middle stroke, therefore it is meaningless gibbrish.
10. It is not a valid Chinese character. I have seen it used in Japanese, I don't know what it means.
11. I don't what the English translation "canin" means, but the character 兔 means rabbit.
12. The character 猴, which is showing upside-down; means "monkey", not "horse".
13. The character 羊, which is showing upside-down; means "goat or sheep".
14. The character 馬 (simplified version: 马), which is showing upside-down; means "horse", not "ape".

Update from an anonymous comment posted about this entry:

忠 can actually mean honesty as well.

治 can also have the meaning "peaceful and orderly"

雌 means "female", not "bitch (母豿 or simplified version: 母狗) The meaning is close enough. Also, the character 狗 is written as such in both standard Traditional and Simplified writing. The character 豿 is not used normally, is archaic and is a variant.

彈 also means "plucking or playing a musical instrument".

謠 (simplified version: 谣), in addition to the meaning of "rumour", it also means a "ballad or folk song".

For #10, It is a simplification for 龍 used mainly in Japanese. Although it is not the official simplification used in China (the official simplification is 龙) it nonetheless can be seen in some Chinese situations.

Clock (鐘) or China (中)

A tip from an UK forum has lead me to a Chinese guidebook published by Lonely Planet. I am still trying to figure out if the publisher wanted the cover to say "clock" (鐘, simplified version: 钟) or "China" (中), since both pronounciations for "clock" and "China" are homophonetic (zhong1).

Support from Sinosplice (华结）

John from Sinosplice(华 结 or traditional version: 華結) has emailed me this tattoo photo taken in Australia. The tattoo suppose to mean "Death before Dishonor"(寧死不受辱）, but all the characters go the wrong way.

I guess the tattoo bearer must to explain to everyone from now on why he "rather to be a coward than die honorably".

寧 (simplified version: 宁) = rather
死 = death (or "to die")
不 = no (or "not to")
受 = suffer (or "to experience")
辱 = disgrace (or "dishonor")