Beware of Bulls Eye Tattoos

My good friend Alan writes:

Hi Tian,

I thought we had pretty much covered all of the really silly tattoos out there so far, but evidently not. We have seen a lot of them already on their unknowing victims, but I just happened upon some of the tattoo “flash” with bogus Hanzi actually being sold on the Internet.

Here is one site:


http://www.bullseyetattoos.com/

The scary thing is that they are advertising that they have “thousands of professional tattoo designs.” I guess the hapless tattoo consumer is supposed to “download full size tattoos with the line art stencil a tattooist will need to transfer & ink the perfect tattoo.”

The tattoos in the “Kanji” section are hardly perfect.

Not only are there many kanji with poor brushwork, lots of them have completely wrong English translations like:

色 “Wild” – really means “color”

子 “spirit” – really means “child” but with an extra unnecessary stroke at the top

夕 “child” – really means “evening”

天 “To Die Young” – really means “sky, heaven”

荒 “Passion” – really means “rough, violent, coarse”


But the one that really cracked me up was this one:

生現 “Live For Today”

As is, this gibberish means nothing in Japanese or at least nothing like “live for today” and I don’t think it means anything in Chinese either. The only meaning I can guess is that if it were written 生きて現れる, this would mean “to show up alive” or “turn up alive” as if someone thought dead had appeared alive. Anyway, it sounds pretty spooky, like seeing a zombie!

I think the person who made this up just looked in a dictionary for the word for “to live” 生 and a word that means something like “now” 現 and thought you could stick them together to make “live for today.”

It doesn’t work like that.

The worst thing is that this tattoo appears on their “best sellers” page.

Expect to see these tattoos on gullible people near you soon!

I can’t believe they are actually charging money for this stuff.

Thanks for everything as usual.

Best,

Alan


Dodgy tattoo supply dealers are everywhere, buyers please be aware of that. After all, it is your skin these designs would end up on, these dealers could care less if you have made fools of yourselves.

Wrong Chapter from Tao Te Ching

道德經, or Tao Te Ching, is one of the oldest exemplars of classic Chinese literature. Millions, perhaps billions, of people have read it since it was first written by Lao Tzu (or Lao Zi) around 600 BC.

For some, it is considered to be the Chinese equivalent of the Holy Bible. It has formed the foundation for Chinese philosophies such as Legalism, Neo-Confucianism, and Taoism. Thus, if someone decides to get sections of Tao Te Ching tattooed, he better do some serious research.

However, this person and/or his tattooist did not:


http://www.bmeink.com/A70313/high/bmepb474982.jpg
http://www.bmeink.com/A70313/high/bmepb474981.jpg
http://www.bmeink.com/A70313/high/bmepb474980.jpg

Three photos titled with “This is one of the TAO proverbs. So far I have 88 charaters. (by Jeniffer, Liberty Tattoo's, Sacramento Calif.)” were posted in BMEzine’s gallery on March 13, 2007.

Most of the text was from Chapter 64 of Tao Te Ching, which should read:

其 安 易 持 ， 其 未 兆 易 謀 。
其 脆 易 泮 ， 其 微 易 散 。
為 之 於 未 有 ， 治 之 於 未 亂 。
合 抱 之 木 ， 生 於 毫 末 ;
九 層 之 台 ，起 於 累 土 ;
千 里 之 行 ， 始 於 足 下。
民 之 從 事 ， 常 於 幾 成 而 敗 之 。
慎 終 如 始 ， 則 無 敗 事 。

However in the photo shown above, the section circled in red is actually from a completely different chapter.

Chapter 29 reads:

將 欲 取 天 下 而 為 之 ， 吾 見 其 不 得 已 。
天 下 神 器 ， 不 可 為 也 ， 不 可 執 也 。
為 者 敗 之 ， 執 者 失 之 。
是 以 聖 人 無 為 ， 故 無 敗 ﹔
無 執 ， 故 無 失。
夫 物 或 行 或 隨 ﹔ 或 噓 或 吹 ﹔
或 強 或 羸 ﹔ 或 載 或 隳 。
是 以 聖 人 去 甚 ， 去 奢 ， 去 泰 。

The mistake would be less noticeable if he did not have the chapter title tattooed near his butt cheek.

Chicago Tattoo Typo Lawsuit

A few days ago I got a tip from Marisa of Needled.com about a man in Chicago suing his tattooist for misspelling his tattoo.



The client, Michael Duplessis, wanted "CHI-TOWN" to be tattooed in capital letters as a tribute to the city of Chicago. However, the tattooist Sam Hacker of Jade Dragon Tattoo & Body Piercing gave him "CHI-TONW".

In a bizarre twist, even when Sam Hacker admitted his mistake and offer to repair the tattoo, a group of his friends are supporting him by getting "CHI-TONW" tattoos.

When I took a quick peek at Jade Dragon Tattoo's gallery, I saw this:


http://www.jadedragontattoo.com/slow/tattoos/oriental/index.htm

I am curious if Mr. Duplessis did win the lawsuit, will I be called as an expert witness to testify at series of lawsuits about botched Chinese character tattoos?


Related: Needled.com, Chicago Tribune, Google News, Yahoo News

"I love sucking ass"

"Dave" sent me a photo of his friend's tattoo about two weeks ago with:

A couple of days ago a friend of mine got a tattoo, and upon asking him what it meant, he told me it was a "secret". I know my friend isn't the brightest of stars and I suspect that he had help translating it after he got tattooed and found out it meant "I love sucking ass" or something similar, so I would REALLY love to know what it really means, and since he can barely speak English, let alone Japanese.



At first I thought 举节际乐 (traditional format: 擧節際樂) was some kind of idiom. When my own research turned up fruitless, I then forward it to Alan and he replied with:

What does this jumble supposedly mean? I have no idea. This means nothing in Japanese. Except for perhaps 举 would be recognizable as a variant of 拳.

Even looking at the traditional forms, the characters would be recognized but I don't think that any Japanese person would discern any meaning other than the meanings of the individual characters.

What is this supposed to be? I wonder if the owner of the tattoo simply picked the characters at random.

The whole thing could be backwards (or actually inverted bottom to top), so it should really be read 乐际节举.

This is all I can guess now, but it is really strange that the tattoo would be written inverted even though the characters themselves appear to be fine. Maybe the tattooist was working from a computer-generated font that was cut apart and re-stacked incorrectly like the case of Kimberly.

I tend to agree with Alan and this could be just another case of gibberish been tattooed on one's body. It has even happened to CIA's "Kryptos".

Help Wanted: Master's Thesis on Chinese Character Tattoos

Several days ago, Mariah Miller contacted me seeking help for her Master's thesis.



I am looking for individuals with Chinese character tattoos to fill out a short questionnaire for my master's thesis.

I am a student in the Global Studies Programme run jointly by the German University of Freiburg, the South African University of Kwa-Zulu Natal and the Indian Jawaharlal Nehru University. This is an interdisciplinary program focused on the study of globalization in either the political, governmental or cultural aspects.

I am writing my MA thesis on Chinese character tattoos. For my study, I need as many respondents from as many locations across the world as possible. I would be very grateful to anyone willing to fill out the questionnaire and/or pass the word about my study on to their friends.

Thanks!


If you are willing to participate, please complete Ms. Miller's questionnaire posted above and email it to her at the following address:

"Bugs?"

Professional English-Japanese translator Alan Siegrist writes:

Hi Tian,

OK, so I was looking over the kanji tattoos at Bmezine.com again (yes, it is getting addictive), and I found this picture:


http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A70121/high/bmepb441572.jpg

The first thing I thought of when I saw all of these guys with the character 昆 on their shoulders was the combination 昆虫, but I couldn’t for the life of me think of why they would want to tattoo themselves with the word for bug or insect.

Then I thought it might be a Chinese thing, so I looked it up in a Chinese dictionary. I think that 昆仲 or 昆季 can mean “brothers.” Is that the first association a Chinese person would make upon seeing the character 昆? Or would you think of 昆虫 also? Even if the meaning of “brother” is right, why would they use only 昆 which means only “elder brother”?

If they really wanted to do a guy thing and tattoo themselves with the Chinese or Japanese for “brothers” wouldn’t 兄弟 be a better choice?

Anyway, I know you must be busy, but I still appreciate the work you put into Hanzismatter.com.

Best,


Alan


昆 may have once meant 'brother.' However, just like any other language, its meaning has changed with time. Similar to the word 'gay' no longer exclusively meaning 'happy' in modern day English.

La Presse

link & pdf

In Jan. 31 issue of La Presse, there was an article briefly mentioned Hanzi Smatter:

"Et il y a bien pire. Tian, jeune blogueur chinois aujourd’hui installé en Arizona, s’amuse justement à répertorier les tatouages les plus ridicules. Et il n’en manque pas. Sur son site (www.hanzismatter.com), qu’il alimente depuis deux ans, il a collectionné 400 perles. Parmi elles, mentionnons le tatouage d’une Américaine : « folle diarrhée ». Aïe !"

Since I do not understand French, reader Dimitri translated the paragraph for me:

"There is worst. Tian, a young Chinese blogger, now living in Arizona is having fun documenting the most ridiculous tattoos. And there is no lack of it. On his site, on which he has been working for two years, he collected 400 gems. Amongst them, the tattoo of a young female American: "Crazy diarrhea". Ouch !"