Just a quickie for Katie.
As Chinese/Japanese characters don't work very well in comments boxes, here are the characters you need for:
Swimming:
泳
Add the hiragana ぎ to this Chinese character (EI - to swim) for the Japanese to make it "swimming" rather than "swim". Technically, to make the correct Chinese meaning "swimmING", you need to add the character for water 水 (already the right hand part of the character above) before EI, to give you
水泳
Travel:
旅行
(travel on a journey; lit. to go travelling),
or more likely
進
(to move, such as "move through water". Add む for the Japanese).
So your pretty swimmer's tat should read:水泳進, though this in itself may have additional meanings/interpretations and taken literally simply means "swimming in water to move".
On the nape of her neck a tat such as this would look better written vertically (though the nape of the neck is such an erotic part of a woman that having stuff scribbled there is always a bad idea, however cool it looks on Katie's swimmer).
A cautionary note for everybody:
Kanji/Hanzi are usually pretty ambiguous in their meanings (and are especially a nightmare to Westerners), so make sure and speak to native Chinese/Japanese speakers (preferably teachers) before you have a tattoo or any permanent signage done or you could end up here!
Also ask your teacher for the "stroke order" and "radical" meanings of each character to get a feel for the correct way it is written and its underlying meaning.
The West is full to the brim with meaningless gibberish Chinese/Japanese tattoos.
Never simply take the word of a tattoo artist (unless they're Chinese or Japanese, of course), and if you see one with the seemingly ubiquitous "Chinese Alphabet" chart in their shop (which assigns a totally meaningless character to each letter of the Roman alphabet for those pathetic cretins who want to "spell" their kids' names out on their arms), only encourage your worst enemy to get a tat done there.
For anyone confused as to what I am talking about, have a look at what Katie has made!
I WAAAAAAAAAANT ONE!!!!!!!!!!
11 comments:
I heard about a guy who had his name (he thought) tatooed in Chinese on his chest while he was in the navy. He found out he'd been wandering around for years with Coka Cola emblazened across his frontal area.
Katie's headless wonder is amazing!!!! I just wish I could say that in Chinese!!!!
That swimming costume will never fit, but carry on using those healthy cooking recipies and you might just get away with it.
;-P
Jules: Check out the link in the post. It is a website specialising in crap western tattoos of Chinese characters. Some of them are hilarious! Trawl their archives for some real doozies!
Istvanski: I look much better in a one piece than a two piece, even with my magnificent man-boobs!
This is so cool Dive!! Thanks for all the Chinese characters and that funny link to tattoos gone wrong! For my mosaic tattoo I got the character from a shirt I bought at a swim meet from a Chinese American woman who made them. The shirt just said swim, not swimming (my bad on the grammar), so I'm happy to know how to make swimming! I took the shirt to China 3 years ago and asked a guy if it actually meant swim and he said something about it also meaning travel. But again, I never know quite what to believe. I actually took 2 years of Japanese in college, so I understand the whole brush stroke order and all that (which I completely ignored for the swimmer since I was dealing with shards of glass!), but I don't remember any of my Kanji (I know, pathetic!) so that was no help in this endeavor. I would never get a tattoo myself, but I'd love to do more mosaic ones!
Cheers, Katie. I still can't get over how fantastic your mosaic swimmer looks!
With Kanji I would always ask Mayuko rather than rely on my own dubious skills, and for Chinese we have a China liaison department in the office that's full of Mandarin speakers.
The tattoo horror website is always worth a grin. I check back there about once a month to cheer up a rainy lunchtime.
I always wonder about Chinese looking tattoos that I see on people. I wonder if they have any idea what the characters mean of if they just like the look.
You are an encyclopedia, Dive.
We watched the Olympic opening last night and I kept thinking how lovely all those characters were...so fluid, yet striking.
Thank you Dive for introducing me to Katie's wonderful mosaic and the bad Kanji site! My kids (who love everything Japanese) have told me some funny stories about phony Kanji tats. We had much fun at Otakon today and daughter A took a ton of photos! I can't wait to share some for laughs and giggles.
Robyn: Most people just think they look cool and go into tattoo parlours to be confronted by one of the worst tricks Satan ever played on humans: the "Chinese Alphabet".
Most tattooists have one of these. They take our alphabet and assign a Chinese character to each letter. Kanji/Hanzi each have several different readings (sounds) and meanings and it seems that some time in the past an ignorant Westerner took the characters with the closest sounds to our letters (Ai, Bi, etc.) and assigned them accordingly.
Which gives us millions of westerners with total, meaningless gibberish permanently staining their skin.
Almost as bad are tattooists with "a little knowledge" of Chinese or Japanese. A trawl through the archives of hanzi-smatter (the link in the post) will unearth some truly horrendous and cringe-worthy examples to prove the adage: "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".
Maria: I missed it. I was at work. I saw some pictures, though. I liked the planetty thing. The characters are indeed beautiful. Learning about them is fun.
Hi, Neetzy. Isn't Katie's mosaic wonderful? There are so many talented people here in Blogville (yourself not the least).
Your daughter took photos of the cosplayers? COOL! Do post them! I can't wait to see them and compare them with our local efforts. Our anime fair isn't until October, but I'll make sure and get some pics posted of that.
I had a look at Katie's swimmer and I can understand that you want one, for the purely aesthetic value of course. My that girl (Katie) has many talents!
My computer is now working, btw.
Woohoo! Welcome back, Mme!
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