Chinese Tattoos Gone Bad: Engrish In Reverse
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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.
Other Travelhappy stories of interest:
- Chinese Symbol Tattoos
- Most Popular Pages On Travelhappy In March
- Bangkok Tattoo Parlour: Jimmy Wong’s
- Thailand Tattoo Temple: Wat Bang Phra
- Most Popular Travelhappy Pages In March
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3 Responses to “Chinese Tattoos Gone Bad: Engrish In Reverse”
relax outside! » Chinese Tattoos: Funky Translations
August 29th, 2007
[...] 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 [...]
More Asia Travel Links · Thailand Backpacking: Travelhappy.info
September 8th, 2007
how u goin mate u should put this on u tube yeah man awesome totally dude!!!
bob
February 29th, 2008
[...] Chris Mitchell points out in “Tattoos Gone Bad: Engrish in Reverse,” Chinese characters, when used as a direct translation from English, can make missives [...]