"Daisy"
Few days ago I received an email from an U. S. Navy recruiter in Jacksonville, Florida, asking me to translate this tattoo of a new recruit for him.
The new recruit claimed that his tattoo means “Daisy” in Chinese.
I tried my best to decipher it, and then I realized the “characters” are just English alphabets that made to mimic the “Chinese-look”. Here are some similar fonts.
Apparently Mr. “Daisy” is not the only person that got fooled by this font type, here are two more:
http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A60919/high/bmepb355617.jpg
http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A60927/high/bmepb363248.jpg
The new recruit claimed that his tattoo means “Daisy” in Chinese.
I tried my best to decipher it, and then I realized the “characters” are just English alphabets that made to mimic the “Chinese-look”. Here are some similar fonts.
Apparently Mr. “Daisy” is not the only person that got fooled by this font type, here are two more:
http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A60919/high/bmepb355617.jpg
http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A60927/high/bmepb363248.jpg
posted by tian at
10:57 PM
8 Comments:
I really hate the "Asian" fonts that use actual Japanese and Chinese characters that look similar to a letter - like (from the linked page) ソ for "Y" and 山 for "W". All it does is make people think they can read foreign characters because they're too dense to imagine that two things that look the same might not be the same.
Okay, the 2nd one must say "Hudson", but does the bottom one even say anything in english? maybe "wellin"?
I think that's "Manson" - but I can't figure out the last one.
I think the last one says "Warren" maybe?
I think it's supposed to read "Wallin"...
Either way, it looks like an oil slick vomited circuitry all over his back.
Reminds me of the work of the artist Xu Bing. He has given "calligraphy lessons" for non-Chinese speakers. The lessons play up various western clichés about the characters. Eventually the people who are "learning Chinese calligraphy" discover that they're actually just using boxy Roman characters to write English words. The participant is forced to re-examine their romantic stereotypes about the language.
Something tells me, though, that whoever made these tattoos were _not_ doing the same thing...
at least, not intentionally.
I agree with the HUDSON suggestion on the second, and the third does look to me to be WALLIN, I'm wondering if it is supposed to be Warren heard said with a strong accent.
Bob:"Reminds me of the work of the artist Xu Bing. He has given "calligraphy lessons" for non-Chinese speakers. The lessons play up various western clichés about the characters. Eventually the people who are "learning Chinese calligraphy" discover that they're actually just using boxy Roman characters to write English words. The participant is forced to re-examine their romantic stereotypes about the language."
I remember that our Japanese language teacher gave us an introduction packet on square-word calligraphy by Xu Bin two years ago. It's really interesting, and actually kind of funny...
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home