Do people in China tattoo themselves with English words?
Eugene, London, wherever you are or go it seems, there's someone with a tattoo made of Asian characters. These are a minor pet peeve of mine. If you ask, the be-inked person will probably tell you that the characters mean “happiness” or “love” or “peace” or something like that. Not that they actually know this, mind you. Pointing at a drawing in a binder and going “cool, here’s my money”, does not ensure an accurate translation. As this poor bugger found out…
A fool and his money are easily parted
Many thanks to Mo Valentine for sending along this clip.
The gist (especially if you don’t want to wait for the image to load): In June 2002, a Londoner 18-year-old went to a tatooist with every good intention of having “Love, honour and obey” inked into his arm, in Mandarin. Heh-heh-heh.
Always read the small print
He got his tatt, he went on his merry way; and then the woman at a Chinese takeaway reluctantly admitted to him that in reality his tatt read
“At the end of the day, this is an ugly boy.”
Something tells me that’s not a Babelfish error…
I’m stupid enough to think this tattoo looks cool
Well, yeah. That’s the allure. Different language, neat pictographs. But every time I see one of these tatts, I have to wonder what else you could get inked into y’ own silly self? I mean on the one hand, I feel for the guy – he’s constantly getting laughed at, and he’s going to be out about £500 to get the thing lasered off.
On the other hand, the important thing here is to take away a positive lesson. Sure that tatt might look cool, but it could literally be saying that you’re a moron. Chinese character tattoos might look cool, but do you see people in China lining up to get tattoos in English? (If so, please send pictures)
I’ll just say the moral of the story is not to trust a Londoner to tattoo in Chinese. Cockney, maybe.
And remember: if you do find a good tattoo artist, love, honour and obey them – or else at the end of the day, you might be an ugly boy too.
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Priceless.
A friend of mine was a head chef in Hong Kong and one day got hammered and ended up at Ricky and Pinkie’s tattoo parlor ( in HK they tattoo you whether you’ve been drinking or not ). Next morning he was working and was a bit quiet. He looked up and said ‘Nick, I’m ashamed to admit it but last night I did one of he most thuggish things I’ve ever done.’ He opened his chef’s jacket and had the word ‘MADE IN ENGLAND’ across his left pec. He was regtretting it already and knowing he knew classy people and might someday bump into one of them at the pool or the locker room was feeling pretty silly. I tried to cheer him up by saying it could of been worse, they could of written ‘MADE IN HONG KONG’.
And there’s the story of David Beckham, (famous english footballer married to Posh Spice).
He got her name tatoo on his arm in Hindi. apparently he thought getting it in english would be tacky
hahahahaha he got d0ne like a kipper, chin up s0n.
I’m a tattoo artist in America and share the same per peeve of doing endless asain characters on people who neither speak nor read the language they;re having permanently etched on their bodies. My favorite – a lady with a chinese character on her arm cam in to see me and asked me what it means (as if I know!). She was told it meant “wife/mother” – but upon further investigation we found out it meant “slave girl”. Ha ha!
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