As my Chinese gets better, I’m able to appreciate some things that I didn’t before. One of these things is the Asian tattoos that people get. So I love to browse the site Hanzi Smatter.
I know that all things Asian are in vogue now, so lot’s of dumb people are getting what they think is a cool tattoo. But what they usually end up with is unreadable junk at best or at worst, something that they totally didn’t expect.
Take this gentleman’s tattoo for example:
Original at http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A61204/high/bmepb404816.jpg
He thinks these are his daughter’s initials in English. But the characters 止女流 mean “stop woman flow.” So my guess is that isn’t the message he wanted to send the world. Unless he’s advertising for feminine hygeine products.
So if this type of stuff amuses you as it does me, check out Hanzi Smatter. The guy that writes the blog there just loves this stuff and he has lots of material to work with. You’d think people would become a bit smarter about this, but I guess not.
So here’s a tip: Chinese characters DO NOT equal an alphabet that you can use to transliterate a name. Not even close! If you’re really desperate and want something cool and Taiwanese looking on your arm, try using BoPoMoFo instead. It doesn’t perfectly represent English sounds (morphology?) but it should be a heck of a lot closer.
9 responses so far ↓
1 Chad // Feb 17, 2007 at 11:34 am
Lol. I see those all the time. The thing that really throws folks is that the characters are so context sensitive. When you put a lone character on your person, you are really leaving it up to the veiwer to put meaning to it. Most of the time it isn’t the meaning you intended. Ha.
Fyi. The word you were looking for is phonology. The system of articulation of a language (sound in most but the same rules apply to sign languages). Morphology is the mechanics of meaning. In chinese, each phoneme (sound unit) coorsponds with a morpheme (unit of meaning) in a one to one relationship. I know there are ways they transliterate english words, but I wouldn’t recomend it to non native speakers.
2 tim // Feb 17, 2007 at 1:47 pm
I know a few years ago a lot of the asian american kids I know were getting these tats. I decided against it for a variety of reasons.
3 Tao of Tattoos // Feb 22, 2007 at 7:05 am
These kinds of badly translated kanji tattoos are beginning to show up more and more as Asian inspired tattoos become increasingly popular.
I have nothing against westerners getting kanji tattoos per se in the same way I have no problem with the way many Chinese or Japanese people have adopted the American style in clothing and tattoos.
On my most recent trip to Japan I was amused by some of the ‘Engrish’ on signs and t-shirts! I know it is not permanent the way tattoos are but it would be interesting to see if this is also happening in China and Japan with English script tattoos.
http://www.tao-of-tattoos.com/kanjis.html
4 chessman71 // Feb 22, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Tao,
Engrish is called Chinglish here in Taiwan and it’s everywhere. As an editor, I never get tired of finding more outrageuosu examples. The best I’ve ever seen was an advertising slogan on the decal of a scooter “Sniper — because we care about you and neither does society.”
5 huw roberts // Aug 27, 2007 at 9:13 pm
i was just flickin through google images on chinese tattoos now when i came across this photo of my tattoo,i got this years ago and is meant to be my initials, but many people have told me the same as yourself that there isnt a c hinese alphabet, but when i went down to the local chinese to ask he guessed all of the letters right which are from top H.A.R ,2 or 3 people have also got them right. i dont really know much about it but thought id leave a comment seen as its my tattoo wer talkin about here.lol!!!!
6 chessman71 // Aug 27, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Well hello! I don’t really know what to say about how some Chinese guy recognized the letters H, A, and R from these characters. I don’t see how it’s possible but I believe what you say.
In Chinese, the first character is zhi3 meaning “stop.” The second is nu3 meaning “woman.” And the third is liu2 maning “flow.” So the guy at hanzi smatter got it right. You can see for yourself here: http://www.mandarintools.com/worddict.html
Copy and paste the three characters into the dictionary tool and click on “look it up.” Then click on “look up the individual characters.”
My guess is that several Asian tattoo artists have gotten together and decided that they’ll use certain Chinese characters as an alphabet.
Regardless, as long as you’re happy with it, then that’s all that matters!
Take care.
7 huw roberts // Aug 30, 2007 at 2:26 am
well thats what i though but that they’ve all formed a fake chinese alphabet for the area but a tattoo artist from turkey even guessed them right,lol,im just so baffled by all of it,but im not really bothred about the tattoo as i had it when i was 13 years old 6 years ago,lol,and im sure it will get covred up sum time in the future!!!
8 Jim // Oct 18, 2007 at 2:34 pm
If you are going to have Chinese characters permanently applied to your body, in any way. I recomend having more than one Chinese person read them. If they ALL have no problem reading them, and they concur on the same meaning, you are good to go. I showed mine to a Chinese diplomat in Arlington, Va. He first asked if I were a soldier. He then read them and the meaning matched exactly what I intended.
9 huw roberts // Nov 11, 2007 at 4:21 am
WELL I DONT KNO WHAT TO THINK OF CHINESE LETTERING ANY MORE,TOO MANY EXPLANATIONS BY TOO MANY PEOPLE AND I INT GOT A CLUE WHO’S RIGHT ABOUT ANY OF THEM!!
Leave a Comment