from: Sarah

to: tiangotlost@gmail.com

date: Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 8:02 PM

subject: My tattoo

Hi!

I found your blog randomly, looking for someone to help me figure out

what my tattoo says.

I've had it for about 11 years.

I was young and stupid. I plan on covering it soon, but I would really

like to get your opinion,

I was told it meant "strength"...but then someone else told me it says

"Small animal" or "Little tornado".

Thank you so much! I appreciate it!

Sarah

Due to tattoo's poor calligraphy, it is difficult to determine if it is intended to be a single character, 慉 (to foster) or double character phase, 小畜 (small animal).  

Either case, it is definitely not "strength".

from: Lauren E. 

to: tiangotlost@gmail.com 

date: Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 9:18 PM 

subject: Translate

Can you translate this tattoo

"Hand flow"?!

Since the tattoo's location is above breast cleavage or buttocks crack, this could also be "L" & "R" based on the gibberish Asian font chart.  

How useful!

from: Joey L. 

to: tiangotlost@gmail.com 

date: Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 3:22 PM 

subject: Lost in translation 

Can you please translate. 

Not another “gibberish tattoo”!

Obviously it’s supposed to be JOEY from the handy-dandy cheat sheet to the bogus gibberish font.

from: Alan Siegrist
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 11:52 PM
subject: Woman tree

Hi Tian, Hope you are still enjoying Austria.

Have you seen this tattoo?

The character is actually the Japanese katakana ホ (ho) not 木 (ki, tree). The mistaken use of ‘ho’ is quite unfortunate considering the woman as both subject and canvas. And yes, the hip-hop slang meaning of ‘ho’ (whore) is known in Japan and written with the same character.


http://www.ratemyink.com/?action=ssp&pid=103667

Back in 2005, I saw a photo in Flickr titled "Cindy, a beautiful canvas."

Fast forward to 2012, Dr. Victor Mair met the young lady in person:

So I asked Cindy what she thought the tattooed symbols running down her neck and spine meant. She replied:

The bottom two were supposed to be success… then respect.

Oh well. Works either way. It is what it is. You can put whatever name you want.

Queen OF The World is what I prefer.

I followed up by asking Cindy what she thought the second, very unusual, symbol meant. She said, "Oh, that's just a cross for Jesus."

Tentatively, this is what I had to work with:

1. mǔ 母 ("mother")

2. zǐ 子 ("child"), or perhaps some kind of cross

3. wù 物 ("thing, object")

4. guì 贵 ("precious; expensive")

With considerable effort, I could get that to mean "Mother and child are precious things." But I was not satisfied with this interpretation, both because of my uncertainty over the second symbol and because it required me to accept a strained interpretation of the final two characters.

(Continue reading at Language Log)

from: dulce
to: "tiangotlost@gmail.com"
date: Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 12:19 PM
subject: a question/ tatoo

dear sir

today I met this man, who came to fix my car.
when I saw his arm, tattoed , I did ask him the meaning of the word and he said: this is the name of his son, called: João Victor (something like John Victor in English)

Is he right? I don´t think so....

best regards

dulce



It is completely gibberish, not even correct with the gibberish font.

Slightly off topic here.

Image above was posted in CheckoutMyInk.com. The tattoo is Korean Hangul (Korean alphabet), but upside-side down, of course.

Who or what is "Park Noh Sik"?

In recent issue of GQ magazine (US edition), I came across this ad for The Art of Shaving:



The Chinese translation of "The Ambassador of Smooth" as 平稳大使 is contextually incorrect.

平稳 refers to stability, not related to physical surface condition, which shaving is about. Nor the American English slang usage of "smooth" in terms of finesse.

平稳大使 would be better suited as ad slogan for a physical therapy clinic, than hawking male grooming products.

from: Elsa M.
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 10:41 PM
subject: Hanzismatter-worthy shirt

I actually laughed out loud when I saw the Chinese on this shirt. Thought I would share. Some smart alec designer had finally had enough.




Presumably the intended sentence is:

這是傳統中文的寫法

which means "this is traditional Chinese way of writing",

with missing "文" & "的".

From BME's gallery, 雪 has one extra horizontal stroke under the radical, 雨.

Also, 雪片花 (snow piece flower) is redundant, 雪花 (snow flake) would suffice. 

Dr. Victor Mair at Language Log has a nice piece on how Google Translate became the de facto tool for anyone wants to communicate in a foreign language.  Even though in some cases, translation it provided are incorrect. 

This young man holding the sign at "Occupy Wall Street", probably wanted "No More Corruption".  However, Google Translate gave him "There isn't any more corruption."

By the way, why is he holding a sign written in Chinese?! 

Has this naive young man ever done business in China?

How about 關係, 後門, and 紅包?

from: Fedor M. 

to: tiangotlost@gmail.com 

date: Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 8:23 AM 

subject: hanzi smatter in DFW 

This is a sign for a Chinese restaurant in Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. The characters are upside down and seem to say "blue bamboo". 

蓝竹 does mean "blue bamboo" and it is displayed upside down.  

According to Yelp, its food is terrible and only has one star.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/blue-bamboo-xpress-dallas

from: Laura R.
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 1:14 AM
subject: "Chinese" trash can

Hello and thank you for your awesome blog!

We recently visited the "Phantasialand" amusement park close to Cologne in Germany.

This is what the trash cans in the "Chinatown" section look like. It says "garbage" in German, and while I instantly recognized the second character as being upside down (have been studying Japanese for a while now), I'm not sure whether the first one is a correct character at all or if there is any meaning to this combination.

There were loads of upside down or gibberish characters in the "Chinese" ghost train ride, too ^^;

Thanks in advance!

Laura



Not only the second character 圾 is upside down, the first character 垃 is missing a stroke.

Steve Caires of Engrish.com sent me this today:





http://www.kirainet.com/english/hemorrhoids-%E7%97%94/



From Hector Garcia's A Geek in Japan:



"At first glance, it seems like a kid with a supercool sweater with a Japanese character. The problem is that the character 痔 means “hemorrhoid” in Japanese. Probably the designer confused the character 侍, which means “samurai” and is pronounced “ji”, with the character 痔 that means “hemorrhoid” and is also pronounced “ji”… Both characters are graphically very similar but the meaning is totally different!"

Dr. Victor Mair from University of Pennsylvania sent me a link to a recent posting in the Language Log:







The Chinese on banner for "Bodies... The Exhibition" does not say "discover your body", rather "discover your honorable corpse." [More]

My father has forwarded me this news story about hilarious mistranslated signs used by Royal Caribbean Cruise Line. It appears Royal Caribbean Cruise Line did not verify the Chinese translation's accuracy and blindly trusted Google Translate.

Luckily paper signs can be reprinted, unlike tattoos.


Corned Beef Hash => "salted beef jumbled signal"


Ham and Bamboo Shoot Salad => "clumsy actor and bamboo's salad"


Garden Greens => "[botanical] garden became green color"


Chicken and Mushroom tart => "timid and rapidly grown prostitute(s)"


Regular Milk => "policy milk"
Half & Half => "secondary butter blended mixture"


Green Split Pea Soup => "green separation pea soup"


English Bacon => "English [language] cultivate root"

* Update: several readers have informed me that 培根 is an acceptable transliteration for "bacon" in Taiwan. However, the sign is still incorrect for using "English [language]", instead of "English [cuisine style]".


Creamy Italian Dressing = "butter Italy costume"

Original Story:
中式英文令人啼笑皆非 美国人英译中菜单更搞笑(图)

Language Log:
Timid and Rapidly Grown Prostitutes

from: Gunnar
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 11:16 AM
subject: Funny tattoo "Ride Hard Die Free"

Hi,

I stumbled across this tattoo online, and I haven't seen on your blog before. It is supposed to say "Ride Hard Die Free" but as you can see Google Translate made a creative interpretation of the phrase. I hope you enjoy it!

http://beckmansbruk.blogg.se/2010/january/7-e-januari-1.html

Thank you for a great blog!

Regards,
Gunnar



Grammatically speaking, this tattooed phrase is Chinese, however its translation back to English is far from "Ride Hard Die Free".

Granted, 免費 does mean "free of charge", 乘坐 does mean "riding, or being passenger", 硬 does mean "hard", but 模 or 硬模 is not verb for "die, or dying". Rather it is the noun "die" as in "die-casting" or "die-molding".

I guess this young man is quite proud and wants everyone to know he enjoys "freely shoving die-casted figurines up his ass"?

Kinky!

from: Victor H. Mair
to: Tian
date: Wed, May 25, 2011 at 7:30 PM
subject: smatter

Hanzi Smatter circa 1700

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3160



A friend of Dr. Mair sent him a photograph of Dutch chinoiserie tile panel from the late 17th-early 18th century, and asked him to help her identify some of the curious scenes represented on it. Dr. Mair, however, was immediately drawn to the cartouche in the upper left corner.

Here is what happened...

from: Fryeda K.
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Fri, May 20, 2011 at 1:20 PM
subject: Tattoo

This idiot went to get "his name", but now gets "lots of laughs in Chinese restaurants".

So, the question is, what does it really say?

Thanks!



Although top character is 積, however it would not make any sense combining with 神.

Most likely it was a typo and intended tattoo is 精神, or spirit.

from: John C.
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Tue, May 17, 2011 at 12:58 PM
subject Tattoo Translation

Hi there,

I got a tattoo a few years back saw the image in a shop alongside a few others, and decided to get it. It is supposed to be Outlaw, though someone I used to game online with from China told me it actually directly translates to Out of the Law. I can live with that if that is true. Though now that it is time to get my tattoos touched up due to fading, I want to double check before I get a new coat of ink put on it. Here is the attached image from when it was still freshly done.

Thanks,

John



躲藏 means "[in] hiding" and 犯 is "criminal".

However the translation of 躲藏犯 is equivalent of "snitch" or "rat". It is associated with someone has betrayed his duty and honor to exchange for freedom but in a life of hiding. Definitely not glamorous in either law enforcement or crime syndicates' eyes.