Strange "Love"

Three weeks ago, I emailed Shannon Larratt a list of incorrect tattoo samples that were featured in his BMEzine tattoo gallery. One thing I pointed out was that some tattooists may be sharing inaccurate tattoo stencils (or flash). Perhaps they just purchased the stencils from the same company, but all their clients had the exact same mistake in their tattoos.

This week I saw the same trend again. All these tattoos of the character 愛 (love) are missing a dot on the left side, and the first dot in the 心 (heart) partial are pointing in the wrong direction:


http://flickr.com/photos/joeyplaid/21165173/


http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A20821/high/tattoo.jpg


http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A20122/high/tattoos3.jpg

And in this person’s “love”, the 心 (heart) partial is not even completed:


http://flickr.com/photos/joeyplaid/46594305/


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"Family"

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"Forever Protector of Old Ladies"

http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A50925/high/bmegl139061.jpg
http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A50925/high/bmegl139053.jpg

Perhaps the character in the red circle is a Japanese phonetic translation, but there is no character in Chinese vocabulary has 夕 and 女 combined together. When they are separated, the character on the left 夕 has multiple meanings depends on the context. It usually means “dusk” or “evening”. The character on the right 女 means “female”.

In Chinese, it could either mean “evening woman” (prostitute? call girl? escort?) or “old woman” (dying woman?), since people always associate sunset and dusk with old age.

The top two characters on his back are 保 (to protect, to guard) and 永 (eternal). Therefore his tattoo would mean “[to] forever protect evening/old/dying woman” in Chinese.

It would be great if he actually works as a call girl’s body guard or in a nursing home taking care of dying old ladies.

Here is another screw up by the same tattoo studio. 地獄 (hell) is missing a dot. Rock on, you moron.


http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A50925/high/bmegl139050.jpg


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"Mommy"

http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A50925/high/bmegl138540.jpg

媽咪 is the Chinese version of English word "mommy". In this tattoo, the second character 咪 has been rotated 90 degrees clockwise.

Related: J. D. of CBS' Rockstar and Burger King's ice cream cone cover.


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"Destroy"

I got an email from one concerned reader about his kanji tattoo for “destroy”. Along in the email, he has provided a link to one of the companies that sells the tattoo flash where his tattoo came from.


(screenshot, original site)

What the character 儡 really meant was not "destroy", but "puppet" or "dummy"!

I was overwhelmed about the number of misleading translations and errors they had on their website. It is obvious that people ran that website did not understand Chinese or Japanese. They should have consulted with someone before posting misleading product on their site. This is a blunt display of unethical business practice.

When people get sick from eating at unsanitary restaurants, they could file complains with the food safety branch of the government. What would you do when you have gibberish tattooed on your body?

Update: Tattoo By Design, the company I have mentioned above, has emailed me with this reply:

"Our translations are carried out by qualified translators. All images in the 'rate by tattoo' and 'library' sections are submitted either by users or by artists and are not done by us. I have seen many poor and wrong translations myself submitted in the galleries but they are not available for printing and are examples of what people have had done or sketched up and are not examples of our work." (original email)

It is also interesting to point out the pages mentioned in my original posting have now became "members only". (It has always been "members only")

Update 2: Johnny has pointed out more errors on that site.


(screenshot, original site)

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"Derek"

德里克 is the Chinese phonetic translation of "Derek" and its variants "Dereck" or "Derrick". Too bad the middle character is upside down.

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Bad Fortune

The last place I would expect to see Chinese errors would be inside the fortune cookies. 云吞食品公司 (Wonton Food Inc.) has found a way to make my nightmare come true.

Both Erik of Mandarin Tools and I had fortune notes with incorrect Chinese. I don’t care about the lucky numbers, nor the cheap Yoda-like Engrish pep-talks printed on the note, but I do care about the other side – Learn Chinese.



(wrapper)

Mine (shown above) was not as entertaining as what Erik got:

The Chinese pinyin is correct for “pot sticker”, but the printed Chinese 罐屠夫 is something completely different. 罐 is a type of ceramic container, similar to a jar. 屠夫 is butcher.

Shame on you, Wonton Food Inc. of Brooklyn, NY 11206!


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