In Wales road signs are printed in both English and Welsh. When a new sign was being made someone sent the English part to a translator, who’s out of office message was in Welsh. They assumed that message was the translation and printed it on the sign.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mistranslated-welsh-traffic-sign/
Not a translation error but the worst tattoo I ever saw on someone was a guy with a bloody tampon tramp stamp.
In high school there was a Chinese girl who hung out with us. We were at at an arcade after school one day, and this guy comes up to her. She’s 16. He’s 40. He says something like “Hey baby, check this out!”
He takes off his shirt to reveal a not at all impressive body. But his chest had something tattood on it in Chinese.
She goes wide eyed, and runs off. When we caught up to her (obviously without the guy) she’s having trouble breathing, because she’s giggling so hard. Just try to visualize that. It’s not a belly laugh, it’s a giggle, but she’s giggling so hard she’s wheezing.
Now she spoke full perfect english, and only had a slight barely noticable accient. But when we asked her what was so funny, she went full stereotype Chinese voice from how amused she was at the tattoo.
“His chest…it say ASSHOOOOEEEE!!!” (She was saying asshole, but I typed it phonetically how she said it, and with the enthusiasm she said it).
She just burried her face in her hands, and had the biggest giggle fit I’ve ever seen. She later said “He must have been an asshole to the tattoo artist. He’ll never know!”
I mean considering the fact that he flashed himself to a 16 year old girl without any warning, I’d say that tattoo was well deserved.
宫保鸡丁
kung pao chicken.
he thought it was super funny, like he was in on the joke.
That’s actually hilarious.
Ehm… isn’t “日本” = “Japan” both in chinese and japanese?
Thats what google translate is telling me anyway
Yes.
Username checks out so I trust this commenter with my life right now.
The subtitle could have been not literal translation. The dialogue could have been “this is kanji for japan” or characters for japan. But the subtitle wrote Chinese for japan, because the movie/speaker was Chinese… Maybe
Not the first time I’ve Lemmied this story, and it’s not a tattoo it’s a motorcycle decal. Kid turns up on a Kawasaki forum to show off his Ninja’s paint scheme, and on the front cowling are five kanji figures, the first and the third were identical. Someone asked “Why does your bike say ‘pig dog pig bird horse?’” He says “Nah man, it says N-I-N-J-A. That’s how you spell ‘Ninja’ in Japanese.”
I remember seeing a FB post ages ago, of some dude saying that he went to Japan to tattoo “God is faithful” in Japanese because he didn’t trust local tattooists to write it right. The post was a photo of the tattoo on the dude’s arm.
Someone pointed that it said something along the lines of “idiot stranger”.
Mr “I went to Japan” complained that was impossible, because he went to Japan.
The other person posted a screenshot of the kanji on google translate and lo, “idiot stranger”
Even the premise: why would you want a Christian message in Japanese?
I was thinking of getting 何か日本語で “nanika nihongo de” and if someone would ask me what it meant I’d say “something in Japanese”
I had a roommate that asked me for ideas for a tattoo and I told him to just get ‘Chinese Symbols’ written in all caps on him.
The amazing bastard did it.
Unfortunately, it’s been dead for a couple of years now, but this blog used to translate everyone’s Asian-language tattoos.
A significant number of them use characters that are not from any language at all.
Quite a few that do have meanings are pretty funny, sometimes are quite ironic too.
https://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/
Edit: I forgot about this, but it’s still on the front page of that blog and I laughed all over again.
Is this real?
I know someone who has something tattooed on him: in Thai.
As in, it’s a phrase which says ‘in Thai’ in Thai. So when people ask him, what is that? He says ‘it’s in Thai’. They say yes, but what is it? ‘It’s ‘in Thai’’. Yes, but…
You get the idea.
I have a tattoo that means “I don’t know, I don’t speak japanese.” It works when an English speaker asks me what it means, and it also worked with the Japanese when I lived in Japan and didn’t speak the language.
This is like setting your guest WiFi password to “It’s on the wall over there.”
I knew a barista that set the wifi pass to “ten bucks”.
Some guy came up to me when I first joined the military and told me “hey I got your name tattooed on my ass. Don’t believe me?”
Sure enough there was “YOUR NAME” tattooed on his ass check. I’m pretty sure he just liked showing people his ass.
Was it a nice ass at least?
I knew a guy who had “bad to the bone” written on his neck in Chinese. The problem is, the phrase doesn’t translate at all.
So, his tattoo read as “my bones are bad”
Tbf, he was a clown and had something like that coming.
Now the day I was born The nurses all gathered 'round And they gazed in wide wonder At the horror they had found The head nurse spoke up Said, “Leave this one for dead” She could tell right away That my bones were bad
My bones are bad My bones are bad B-B-B-B-Bad B-B-B-B-Bad B-B-B-B-Bad
My bones are bad
Not his fault, that’s just a mean or ignorant tatooist. Why wouldn’t they just do a literal word for word translation if there’s no equivalent phrase in Chinese?
Like if the phrase “great to the neck” has some special meaning in Chinese but not English, you can still write the english words “great to the neck” on someone’s skin.
