• rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I dunno, I have some workout trousers with a Chinese logogram on them. Dunno what it means. Hope I won’t ever

  • BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Asian beauty makes me think of an ad for makeup. Alternatively, those cool looking mountains from old looking paintings that look like giant ant mounds.

  • undergroundoverground@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I knew a guy who had “bad to the bone” written on his neck in Chinese. The problem is, the phrase doesn’t translate at all.

    So, his tattoo read as “my bones are bad”

    Tbf, he was a clown and had something like that coming.

    • Mine is similar. On my forearm,not my neck (yuck). It’s supposed to be “blood and guts”. Literal translation equals something about “inside organs”.

      I’m okay with that. If you actually discuss the meaning of works out fine.

      I got that tattoo because I actually work with “blood and guts” as a Paramedic.

    • Unbecredible@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      Not his fault, that’s just a mean or ignorant tatooist. Why wouldn’t they just do a literal word for word translation if there’s no equivalent phrase in Chinese?

      Like if the phrase “great to the neck” has some special meaning in Chinese but not English, you can still write the english words “great to the neck” on someone’s skin.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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    6 months ago

    Unfortunately, it’s been dead for a couple of years now, but this blog used to translate everyone’s Asian-language tattoos.

    A significant number of them use characters that are not from any language at all.

    Quite a few that do have meanings are pretty funny, sometimes are quite ironic too.

    https://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/

  • ABCDE@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I know someone who has something tattooed on him: in Thai.

    As in, it’s a phrase which says ‘in Thai’ in Thai. So when people ask him, what is that? He says ‘it’s in Thai’. They say yes, but what is it? ‘It’s ‘in Thai’’. Yes, but…

    You get the idea.

    • MinorLaceration@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I have a tattoo that means “I don’t know, I don’t speak japanese.” It works when an English speaker asks me what it means, and it also worked with the Japanese when I lived in Japan and didn’t speak the language.

    • Thebeardedsinglemalt@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      My sister’s first year in college she got the Chinese word for LOVE tattooed. Later she found out it was the correct symbol, only mirrored. I called her EVOL for a while

  • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I never tattooed it on myself, or anyone else, but I used to work at a local greasy spoon, and knew a Professor of English that came in regularly, who was originally from China. I asked him for the name specific characters that phonetically made up the syllables of my and my girlfriend’s names, he went to wait for his food, and came back with the characters he thought would work best. I used those to burn the characters into the weed stash box that she and I had made.

    We told everyone that asked that we had no clue what it actually meant, it just sounded like our names.

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        The Chinese English professor told me that my name meant something like “strong ox” and hers meant “beautiful lotus,” but I have no way to verify that, as I no longer have the box. She does.

        • savx@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          i would guess your name is John? “strong ox” seems 犟 to me(upper part is strong, bottom ox), beautiful lotus i got no idea.

      • Sweetpeaches69@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        English names tend do just get characters that sound phonetically like their English pronunciation. As such, a lot of names, especially longer ones, don’t mean anything. If you directly translated them, a lot of the time you’d get like “cabbage the horse wheel” or something.

        • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          If you directly translated them, a lot of the time you’d get like “cabbage the horse wheel” or something.

          That reminds me of the “Password Strength” comic by xkcd. All right, it’s settled. Next time I need new password, I’m feeding random names into a phonetic name translator.

  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    In high school there was a Chinese girl who hung out with us. We were at at an arcade after school one day, and this guy comes up to her. She’s 16. He’s 40. He says something like “Hey baby, check this out!”

    He takes off his shirt to reveal a not at all impressive body. But his chest had something tattood on it in Chinese.

    She goes wide eyed, and runs off. When we caught up to her (obviously without the guy) she’s having trouble breathing, because she’s giggling so hard. Just try to visualize that. It’s not a belly laugh, it’s a giggle, but she’s giggling so hard she’s wheezing.

    Now she spoke full perfect english, and only had a slight barely noticable accient. But when we asked her what was so funny, she went full stereotype Chinese voice from how amused she was at the tattoo.

    “His chest…it say ASSHOOOOEEEE!!!” (She was saying asshole, but I typed it phonetically how she said it, and with the enthusiasm she said it).

    She just burried her face in her hands, and had the biggest giggle fit I’ve ever seen. She later said “He must have been an asshole to the tattoo artist. He’ll never know!”

    • Clbull@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I mean considering the fact that he flashed himself to a 16 year old girl without any warning, I’d say that tattoo was well deserved.