• Dojan@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This is my favourite. 痔 means haemorrhoid. Presumably it was meant to say 侍, samurai.

  • whoisearth@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    I mean we can probably all visualize the person who had that tattoo and “foreign pervert” probably fits them perfectly.

    • Kythtrid@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      And honestly a pretty hillarious phrase to tattoo when some white foreigner rolls up asking for a “Lover of Asian Beauty” tattoo.

  • Ilovethebomb@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Where I live, we get a number of used vehicles imported from Japan, and for a while it was trendy to have English slogans on vehicles.

    They frequently made little sense, I imagine our ones look the same to them.

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Wasn’t a tattoo, but a motorcycle decal. This dude had a Kawasaki crotch rocket with five kanji characters on it. Posted it to a forum, and this weeb says “lol where’d you get that?” dude answers all defensively “From the mall, why?” Weeb says “It says pig bird pig lizard dog.” “No dude, it says N-I-N-J-A.” He thought kanji characters translated directly to the latin alphabet.

    • Resistentialism@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      Damn, I kinda wanna play my English ninja wkth the Japanese word for ninja. But I do not want to end up like that.

    • FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Wait did the characters look like the letters for ninja or was it the (I’m assuming Japanese) equivalent of the letter n then I and so on

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        I don’t precisely remember, I’m recalling a forum post I read at least a decade ago, but I do recall that he had at least tried to literally translate the letters “NINJA” to Asian text beyond just picking some McDojo font. I don’t know if he had attempted to find kanji characters that looked relatively like latin letters or if someone convinced him that “This one means N” or something.

  • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    I have a friend that has Thai writing tattooed on his leg that translates to “I love chicken soup.”

    I think when he was drunk he went into a tattoo parlor thinking it was a restaurant.

  • NewAgeOldPerson@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’ve seen a few Sanskrit ones. Nothing drastic in real life, thankfully. I find the Chinese ones much more hilarious.

    Had a friend in college legit get ancient Chinese calligraphy. Absolutely beautiful. But my international center buddy told me separately it just meant window. It was supposed to be this heavenly view or some such thing. No. It was window.

  • happilybitchycowboy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Why not? I got Vete a la Mierda tattooed on my arm when I was young and still learning Spanish. Occasionally, I’ve had the great opportunity to pull my sleeve up.

  • Jikal@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I saw a pic that supposedly said “egg fried rice”. I wouldn’t even be mad

  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    A friend of mine wanted a tattoo in french, she speaks it but not fluently, I found a quote for her that she loved, she transcribed it to paper to bring it to the tattoo artist… I think she transcribed it from memory because she made a mistake in the text and I never had the heart to tell her… And it’s a very long quote in a straight line on her vertebral column, so it’s not easy to hide if she wears something more revealing…

  • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    When I was a kid I remember a clothing store getting in trouble because it was selling underpants with an artistic Arabic lettering design. They hadn’t checked what it said, but it turned out to say “There is no god but God and Mohammed is his prophet.” Having this on underpants didn’t please anyone.

  • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Obligatory do not go to a tattoo parlor and ask them to tattoo something derogatory in their native language as a joke. At worst you’ll severely offend them and at best they’ll be extremely reluctant to do it because it could get them in serious trouble and thrash their reputation. I promise you it’s nowhere near as funny as the internet would have you believe and it won’t be taken well by a vast majority of tattoo artists.

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    How many Chinese people and places have mistranslated a word into English as “fuck?” I can’t remember which word it is, some kind of food. So ya’know, glass houses and all that.