Thailand Backpacking: A Quick Guide - Click Here!
travelhappy   Backpacking And Travelling In Thailand and South East Asia: A Personal Guide

Plain Of Jars, Laos Sukhothai, Thailand
       
Tiger Temple Thailand Thailand Hotels
       
Angkor Wat Cambodia Hanoi Incense

Explore more about: Bangkok | Thailand | Cheap Flights | Australia | Cambodia | China | Indonesia | Japan | Laos | Myanmar | Vietnam

Chinese Tattoos Gone Bad: Engrish In Reverse

Filed under: China, Japan    Written by:.

  Find The Cheapest Flights to China      Book China Hotels - Up To 70% Off!

Thinking of getting a Chinese tattoo? Be very, very careful of what the Chinese characters say (rather than what you think they say) before you commit them to your skin to avoid unintentional hilarity amongst Chinese readers

Award Winning Tattoo Designs - Huge Selection
The Biggest And Best Collection Online at Chopper Tattoo

I mentioned another classic Bangkok Engrish example yesterday, but the joy of seeing your language mangled by unsuspecting foriegners cuts both ways. Hanzi Smatter is a blog that has been faithfully documenting Westerners' cock-ups with Chinese characters, usually in the form of Chinese symbol tattoos, or Hanzi as they're known. Getting a tat featuring Chinese or Japanese symbols is still widely popular - but unfortunately many people literally translate the English into oriental ideograms and it all goes horribly wrong.

There's a big archive of stuff to dig through - here's some of my personal favourites - Inferior goods; Prostitute jewellery; Dragon shorts; and perhaps the coup de grace, crazy diarrhoea (you'll need to read the screengrabbed article for the full glory).

If you're still thinking about getting a Chinese symbol tattoo, you might want to read this first for some guidance towards getting something that's vaguely accurate.

Posted on August 14th, 2007.

Save Money On China Flights And Hotels

Find The Cheapest Flights to China With Kayak.com
Book China Hotels Online - Up To 70% Off!


Other Travelhappy stories of interest:





Make A Comment: ( 3 so far )

blockquote and a tags work here.

3 Responses to “Chinese Tattoos Gone Bad: Engrish In Reverse”

RSS Feed for Travel Happy Comments RSS Feed

[...] Chris Mitchell points out in “Tattoos Gone Bad: Engrish in Reverse,” Chinese characters, when used as a direct translation from English, can make missives [...]

[...] recent post about Chinese Tattoos Gone Bad: Engrish In Reverse got a ton of visitors thanks to being mentioned on Gadling by Jamie Rhein. In the original article [...]

how u goin mate u should put this on u tube yeah man awesome totally dude!!!

bob
February 29th, 2008

Where's The Comment Form?

Search For The Cheapest Flights

Find China Flights And Hotels

Cheap Flights To China - Kayak.com
Book China Hotels - Up To 70% Off!

Search Travelhappy

Don't Miss This!

About Travelhappy.info

Travelhappy is edited by me, Chris M. I'm a British travel writer based in Bangkok, Thailand.[more info]

Thailand Diving

Koh Lanta Diving


Get Travelhappy
emailed to you


Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

RSS