Chinese languages

Please be very cautious if you are thinking of having a 'Chinese' tattoo.

If you go to a tattoo artist that has a book of designs and some Chinese characters are labelled 'love', 'peace' or whatever, be aware that they may be incorrect. There have been reports that people have had tattoos believing them to say 'Love and Peace' when in fact it says 'Fruit and Veg'.

There are many other cautionary tales, such as the student who wanted 'strength' and 'honor' but ended up with a tattoo saying 'small penis'. Another student wanted 'princess' but ended up with 'prostitute' (see link for one example, but google search for some more if you're not convinced).

http://www.angelfire.com/pa3/toplesscar ... rtist.html

If you still think it's a good idea, ask someone to write the character for the word you want. Then ask several other people to tell you what it means (for independent confirmation). And don't think that the friendly guy from your local Chinese takeaway won't do this to you - he might, he's bored, working long hours for little pay, or helping out his folks, and to relieve the boredom, he just might think it's a laugh to write "sweet and sour pork" when you ask him to write your name in Chinese.

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Or better yet find your own culture.

Or better yet come to China and get a FEELING for the language and culture. Why would you want a Chinese character tatoo when you have no Idea about China, its languages or customs. Because it's cool ?? You fool.

I'm chinese.. and I've been considering putting an 'A' across my forhead. I just 'love' the english letters. They're so 'artistic'

(This is sarcasm for those of you NOT bright enough to get it. I need to write this in brackets because I suspect many of you putting asian characters on as tattoos will probably need it.)

Wow, a lot of hostility. Personally I'm about to get my siblings names tattooed in Chinese & I'm not Chinese. I went to China last year and I loved the culture. My brother traveled to China and Korea this Fall and also loved it. As a result I'm getting his name in Chinese & little brother in Korean. In addition to my little sisters name in Chinese, I am getting little sister in Japenese (I went to Japan in 1997 and also had an amazing experience). Anyways I'm doing the tattoo the way I am because I love my family and the experience that I had in those countries (and my brother had in the case of Korea). I agree that it seems kind of cheesy to get a tattoo with a language in which you have no association with the country or culture. But in the defense of the English language, during my trip to China I saw terrible translations on such thing as clothing and billboards, among other things and honestly it was just a stupid and trendy as what's happening here with Chinese & Japanese. So say what you will but it happens on both sides of the ocean.

I always like the name Fatima, since in my dialect it is pronounced

[fat3 tsOi53 ma11] which means wide mouthed woman, to put it politely.

The worst name I've come across is Nancy which in my dialect is

[lan53 si31] meaning rotten faeces.

So, Nancy's and Fatima's across the world, beware.

Dyl.