October 21, 2004

• "I am speechless... Chinese translation: 狂 = crazy 瀉 = to flow out, diarrhea" This is why I will never have Chinese characters tattooed on me.
• Awesome find, dhruva. Turnabout is fair play. Of course, some people do this on purpose. You can buy T-shirts that intentionally have non-sense kanji on them. Or nonsense english, too. If I weren't a poor college student, I might waste my money on one or two, but I prefer aloha shirts over T-shirts.
• Finally a topic dear to my heart — horrible kanji tattoos. This guy's Japanese is suspect. For instance this one, which he finds confusing, is one of the most common ways to say "naughty" or "unruly" in Japanese. (Eg: 男の子の腕白は仕方なし = "boys will be boys".) The worst thing about that tattoo, AFAIC, is the use of block printing font, as if it were a government document or something. One would think that "naughty" requires a more whimsical rendition. "Nico" made me chuckle. (I am not really here.)
• I am glad you aren't. I won't tell on you or anything.
• Waves. Moon. Mirrors. *hearts the absent fuyugare*
• *didn't see fuyugare, waves to no-one* I'm so going to get a photo of my sister's "courage" character and post it here. I'll laugh my ass off if it says something else, since she's a bigot at the best of times. Sad but true.
• I enjoyed this story in a totally Schadenfreude-ish manner.
• The shades of night were falling fast, When through a London station passed A youth, who bared, despite advice, One forearm with the strange device, Vihctoria!
• If it had said "Vhictoria" then that would have been proof positive the tatoo artist was drunk. (puns intended)
• I don't know if anyone else noticed, but it is "monkey week" at engrish.com. Beeswacky, perhaps you can put your word smithing to work using engrish. Let me know if anyone wins a t shirt.
• As Britney Spears' tattoos prove, it can happen to fans of other languages too.
• I have always wondered if somewhere in China there is a dude showing his tattoo to his friends going, "dude, this means 'Great Strength' in English" -- and then he rolls up his sleeve and has "Telephone Monkey Pencil Sharpener" printed on his arm.
• "Telephone Monkey Pencil Sharpener" would be a great tattoo. Or a good band name.
• ...or a subject line for spam
• There's actually a huge difference between this and engrish. The mistaken Kanji (or katakana or hebrew or whatever) happens because people see kanji as something visually beautiful and artistic. The tatoo is more for how it looks than what it says. The meaning is incidental; People trying to pick a specific meaning because the have the option, but if it doesn't look neat, they won't take it. Engrish, on the other hand, happens when a corporation is trying to sell something, and they're to cheap to hire someone that knows English. So they just get an Japanese/English dictionary and wing it. Often it works, sometimes it doesn't. The former happens out of respect for a language, the latter happens out of apathy towards a language. Both are funny, but they're kind of the opposite of each other.
• If it had said "Vhictoria" ... Actually, I believe it does say "vhictoria". "Vihctoria" would require the /h/, /k/ and /T/ characters to combine, not the /v/ and /h/ as in this tattoo. (Correct me if I'm wrong, dhruva or Gyan.)