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Pictures: Terrible Kanji Tattoos With Their English Translations
It’s possible that the people in these pictures actually wanted things like “Chicken noodle soup” tattooed on their body (chicken noodle soup is delicious), but we’re guessing they probably didn’t.
Note that these tattoos are in Chinese but, as the Japanese writing system originates from China, many of the characters are the same.
Via: Buzzfeed
Pictures (modified by Buzzfeed): Hanzi Smatter, Epic Chinese Tattoo Fails, plchinese, Spider Daily, bbs.tiexue.net, Baike
116 thoughts on “Pictures: Terrible Kanji Tattoos With Their English Translations”
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資料庫 (9)
Interesting blog. Just to be sure, though, 小畜、大過 are two diagrams from the Book of Changes. 宦官 is indeed very bad. It means ‘eunuch.’ Not sure any guy wants to be that.
Is it possible some of them are weird because they are words in English, translated to Chinese or Japanese and then back to English?
nope, they still means stupid things in mandarin. lol
宦官is not the emperor’s clerk but the eunuch!
but the emperors clerk was a eunuch!!!
Que ninguém sabe na verdade o que está escrevendo em seu próprio corpo.
Shawn Marian’s 魔鳥樟 isn’t Chinese. In Japanese it means Matrix.
On #2 how are you getting “that too” from 後身？I bet anything he’s trying to say “this is reincarnation” or something to that effect, it’s just not a great way to say that.
I meant to say “tattoo” and now that I look at it maybe it is 纹身, my mistake! Bad calligraphy though. Ignore my comments haha
Some of these are just picking the wrong word (or missing a radical)… the turgid mold looks like it was supposed to be ‘gravestone’ 墓碑 and husband hand was a helping hand: 扶手
you are a dumb ass if you get some bull shit you cant read
Some of those translations are wrong, and they and they are exaggerating for dramatic effect.
The 9th one on the list, with the basketball player, is 可以 (pronounced kěyǐ in mandarin) which is an operative verb, and literally means “can, may” or “possible”.
Example: 可以进来吗？(Kěyǐ jìnlái ma?) = May I come in?
I’m assuming he was wearing it with some artistic license, using the third definition that something is possible.
I recognized this word immediately as it is a basic word in Mandarin Chinese.
Furthermore, there is 1) a difference between traditional and simplified Chinese; 2) the possibility of difference between Japanese Kanji and Chinese characters in their definition.
Although Kanji (漢字) does literally mean “Chinese characters” in Japanese, it is only their borrowed origin, and the meaning of a character in Japanese and Chinese can differ.
Example: 行 meaning “to go” in Japanese, while 行 (xíng) means “to be okay” in Chinese.
These are elementary characters. It is important to remember that while basic compound characters can be identical, when combined to make a complex word the meaning can differ between the two languages.
For instance, going back to the original example, 可以 as a word does not exist in Japanese. However, alone 可 is listed in the dictionary as “can; do not; mustn’t; passable; should not” and 以 is listed as “because; by means of; compared with; in view of”.
NOTE: I am not putting the Japanese pronunciation because how the kanji is spoken phonetically depends on whether it is kun-reading or on-reading.
check with someone who understand chinese before you do it
OMFG epic pranks on white and black people!
RICE FRIED BY PORK LARD!!!!!