NBA Body Art - Tale of My Chinese Tattoo
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/players/02/28/tattoos0306/index.html
In the upcoming issue of Sports Illustrated, NBA players were interviewed about their Chinese tattoos.
When asked about why tattooing in Chinese, Marcus Camby replied: "I was into a lot of Chinese flicks, a lot of [kung fu] movies."
Jeff McInnis explains: "I got the dictionary and looked mine up. Some people don't know what theirs mean. They just get them because they look good."
What about Shawn Marion?
Update: An article in Chinese about NBA players' tattoos.
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posted by tian at
11:57 PM
13 Comments:
man, these nba plyers are trying so hard to sound smart and knowledgable about their totally exotic chinese tattoos.
and while I'm at it, I think the 'Jeff' translation sounds pretty bad. accurate, yes, but bad all the same.
And this SI writer feels he can get away with lines like "The tat on his right arm means 'Jeff'". Didn't he do any research?!? (Professional writer, my ass.)
And the classic line from Camby: "I was one of the originators of the Chinese characters." Good grief man, think before you speak! Not only does it sound innane as it came out, it sounds utterly arrogant as you intended it.
Tian, don't you get a little tired with this? A little disillusioned that the message will never get through?
Larry Hughes - didn't want words, so he wrote it in Chinese?! Classic.
Lori,
It gets more entertaining everytime. Just when you think they can't sound any more absurd, you will be surprised with an article like this one.
Coco echoes my sentiments. What does Larry Hughes think Hanzi/Kanji is?
Oh yeah...pretty symbols...I forgot.
I still can't get over the "phonetic name translation thing."
Tian!
I love your site! There'll never be a shortage of material! Keep up the great work!
arison said:
I still can't get over the "phonetic name translation thing."
Do you mean in general, or in this case, particularly?
Is it just me, or did the writer confuse left from right as well? He says that the one on the right (幸福) is "Jeff" and that the one on the left (杰夫) is "bliss". Hmm.
I think the writer got the arms right in his description, but didn't know how the photo layout would go.
Hmm... does that one tattoo really mean "Jeff," or is it just some sort of transliteration? In Japanese, 夫 could be pronounced "fu."
LOL either way.
This reminded me of something. I remember reading something by Yoa Ming a couple years ago. In it, he mentioned seeing a Chinese character tatooon some other player's back. His comment on this was something along the lines of "I'm not quite sure why somebody would want 'indecicive' written on their back."
Here is Yao Ming's interview which he mentioned "Allen Iverson's tattoo means 'loyalty'. That's the only good one I can remember seeing."
http://english.people.com.cn/200410/12/eng20041012_159901.html
pepperjack:
In general
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