Getting a tattoo is a serious decision: you want it to look great and to reflect your inner values. So it’s natural that you want your tattoo design to come out perfect. However, tattoos in foreign languages sometimes have a tendency to… backfire. Especially if they’re in Chinese or Japanese and you don’t happen to know either language!
When one internet user asked Redditors who speak the two languages what was the biggest translation fail they’ve seen tattooed on someone was, the floodgates opened. Scroll down for the best of the bad tattoos and get ready to giggle like a gaggle of geese. Remember to upvote the stupidest tattoos!
Bored Panda spoke to Japanese language expert and member of the VMU Japanese club Hashi Kotryna Kvietkauskaitė about foreign language tattoo ideas. Read on for our exclusive interview and some great advice to keep in mind if you ever plan to get a tattoo with Japanese or Chinese symbols!
We’re also pretty sure that you’ll want some more hilarious dumb tattoo stories after reading this list. So be sure to check out our earlier article about people who are fluent in Chinese or Japanese sharing tales of the worst tattoos they’ve seen.
#1
I (27F don't understand Chinese/Japanese) have the characters for "Strawberry" on my shoulder. Was at a gym changing and gal 1 who could read the language says "Oh! Strawberry! I love your tattoo". I explained why I had gotten the tattoo (long story involving strawberries) and gal 2 overheard our conversation. Gal 2 says "I have a tattoo that means "wisdom" and shows us; gal 1 says "... that says Turtle".
Edit: here is the story behind the tattoo! My grandmother passed away of bone and lung cancer in 2010. I bought frozen strawberries a few weeks later to make smoothies in the morning, and the smell of those frozen strawberries transported me back to my childhood when I would eat frozen strawberries from her freezer. She used to pick SO many and make jam etc etc but I would pick strawberries to snack on instead of ice cream.
After she had passed I decided to get a tattoo, and was thinking of a strawberry with ice crystals around it or something. I went for (American) Chinese food with friends and was telling them about my tattoo idea. When it came time to break our cookies and read our fortunes mine read "to remember is to understand" which I thought was cool, had been remembering and thinking of my grandmother over the last month or so since she had passed. When I turned over the fortune, the "chinese word" was strawberry.
I've never seen 6 people turn white so quickly.
I decided to get the chinese symbols for strawberry that day, and I still have the fortune in a special box at home.
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293points
#2
Saw a pretty tatted up guy one day with some Chinese markings on his forearm, asked him what they meant and he said "just a bunch of random Chinese letters", to which I inquired, "which ones?" and he corrected me, saying "no, it says - "just a bunch of random Chinese letters"
Thought it was pretty slick
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276points
#3
Guy had "変態外人" on his arm, said it meant "Lover of Asian Beauty" when in fact it means "Foreign Pervert"
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262points
While Kotryna said that she has yet to personally see a similar tattoo in real life, she’s read plenty of similar stories on the internet. According to her, if a tourist visits Asia and gets a tattoo that turns out to be dumb or a random string of words, it’s usually the visitor who’s at fault.
“The person in question might have done something to offend the tattoo artist. Either that or they’re so convinced of their own personal interpretation of what the symbols mean that the tattoo artist feels helpless to ask if the person understands what the tattoo really means,” Kotryna told Bored Panda.
#4
My uncle has "Egg Drop Soup" tattooed on his wrist in Mandarin. He tells everyone it means something different (strength, destiny, etc.) but he got it so that he can go to the Chinese place when he is super hungover. He wears shades and noise-cancelling headphones, points to his wrist and is able to stay in his happy place while getting his favorite hangover meal. And yes, he was hungover when he got the tattoo.
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249points
#5
Friend of a friend- wanted a tattoo that said “Bad Ass”. It translated to “ evil butt”.
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226points
#6
My mom is from Japan, and she used to point out tattoos to me all the time. I don't speak Japanese myself, so I can't give the exact translations or characters.
She told me one of the biggest mistakes people make is when they pair two characters together, without checking what the characters mean as a group. They assume that the characters maintain their original meanings no matter what's alongside them.
There are two examples I remember really clearly:
(1) a woman with characters like "sexy" and "woman". What it actually said was whore house.
(2) a dude with "sex" and "freak" on his chest, which actually meant something along the lines of predator or pervert.
She'd see the tattoos and just immediately start giggling. Memories. :,)
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182points
She had some useful advice for anyone who’s thinking of getting a tattoo in any foreign language (especially Japanese and Chinese). “Find a friend who knows the language. Let them check the meaning of the words or phrases you want to get tattoos of, whether they mean what you think they mean.”
Kotryna added: “Not all tattoo artists in the West know Asian languages and they might not be able to tell you that a particular phrase isn’t correct.”
“Asian languages, especially Chinese and Japanese, work differently than we’re used to. Two words combined together don’t always mean what you think,” she said, referring to Ariana Grande’s “7 Rings” tattoo that actually means “Barbeque Grill.” Ariana later unsuccessfully tried to fix the tattoo and it now says "Japanese Barbeque Finger."
#7
Learning Japanese, but I saw someone bragging about a tattoo on their wrist in public being ‘deep’ and ‘meaningful’. It was in katakana, which I can read, so I carefully glance at it as I walk by.
It was ‘ケロ’. As in ‘kero’.
That’s the sound a frog makes. They just tattooed ‘ribbit’ onto their wrist.
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172points
#8
The four elements tattoo with "Dirt, hot, blow, wet" was pretty funny.
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171points
#9
It wasn't a tatoo, but I knew a girl who stitched some japanese symbols onto her bathrobe "just because they looked pretty".
Translation was "Tokyo fire department"
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167points
#10
Young white people getting tattoos of Asian symbols
Young white people getting tattoos of Asian symbols that they think they know the meaning of, but really don't. White guy who speaks Chinese here. I've perfected the tactful question: "what does your tattoo mean to you?"
A sample of the tattoos I've actually seen on real people:
真实 - "authentic/actual." Dude's response "keep it real."
演 - "perform." person's response: "dragon."
操 - "f**k." Person's response: "beauty."
混蛋 - "moron." Person's response: "it's my name in Chinese."
鸡 - literally "chicken," but figuratively "hooker/prostitute." Person's response: beautiful woman.
富达而立克 - "Frederick." Person's response "It's my name." Me: "Fred?" Him: "what?"
生命 - "living/biological." Person's response: "Destiny."
能 - "to be able to." Pronounced "nung." The person thought it was 龍 - "dragon." Pronounced "lung."
...and my personal favorite:
我从来没有毕业高中 - "I never graduated high school."
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164points
#11
A work colleague (now long term friend) had ‘pom pooey’ tattooed on his shoulder. He had been to Thailand and the locals nick-named him pom pooey and said it meant happy fat man (he was fat, he was happy, lovely man). He did not know how to spell it (or even say it correctly?) but, 20 years later, he still loves that tattoo.
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157points
#12
Not my story but a friend of mine:
She could read kanji and was in class one day noticing this girl’s tattoo for the first time. Confused she inquired about it:
“What does your tattoo say?”
“High princess”
Turns out it actually said pig princess.
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152points
#13
I'm half Japanese.
Saw a guy with 田力 tattoo going down his arm. He probably wanted 男 (boy/man)...I'm guessing.
田力 translates to Rice field power. Rice field power.
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152points
#14
Took Mandarin in high school. My teacher told us about a woman who had a tattoo of the word "免费"--probably thinking it meant "free" as in "free-spirited"--but it actually means "free" as in "no cost."
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149points
#15
I have the characters for Shrimp Dumpling (Har Gow) tattooed on me. I knowingly did this because I'm half Chinese and [friggin] love shrimp dumplings.
A Chinese girl asked me if I knew what it meant, and I laughed and said, of course, I love dumplings. My Chinese mother was not impressed but then laughed and said it was very me.
A Chinese girl asked me if I knew what it meant, and I laughed and said, of course, I love dumplings. My Chinese mother was not impressed but then laughed and said it was very me.
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138points
#16
A friend of mine has a leg tattoo that says: 我看不懂汉字 Which basically translates as 'I can't read Chinese' It gets a lot of attention in the summer. *we both live in China.
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133points
#17
Dude was so proud of his grandson that he had a tattoo that said “I love my grandson”
Except I’m guessing everyone just googled “I love my grand son” because it came out reading “I love fat boys.”
Whoops
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128points
#18
I knew a guy who thought he had "warrior" tattooed on his arm but another friend informed me actually read "drunk arsehole".
He was an arsehole, and often drunk, so I chose to believe this.
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125points
#19
While stationed in Japan a friend got a tattoo by some random guy outside of base, he wanted some Shinto quote for a prosperous life but instead got the kanji reading something like "fat fish eat long" the Japanese workers just called him fat fish for the next 3 years... it caught on life fire even random people from other commands knew his nickname
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122points
#20
I met a girl when I was backpacking in China who knowingly had the characters for "prostitute" tattooed on her hip - she thought it was funny, and the only people who saw it would be ones she chose to show it to.
The Chinese guy who was drinking with us in the hostel was horrified, and suggested that she get another tattoo underneath which said "only joking".
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122points