Getting a tattoo design written in a language you don't understand is rarely a good idea. Even tattoos in people’s native tongues are often hilariously misspelled or misinterpreted.
Tattoos written in Hanzi and Kanji (the Chinese and Japanese character sets) became popular in the West in the late 1980s, although there was a niche among sailors who visited the Far East for many years prior. Western tattoo artists usually copy a character from a template, which is often unreliable and can easily lead to context errors if a direct translation is attempted. For example 2001, Britney Spears got a Chinese tattoo inked on her bikini line. She believed that the tattoo meant 'mysterious,' but later on, it was found that this tattoo means 'strange.' Combining the characters to form a phrase or idiom can lead to even worse language jokes, as meanings can change completely, and you end up with a tattoo fail like "demon bird mothballs" forever inked on your skin.
So you have to ask yourself, then – why do people still choose these tattoo ideas? After all, you are relying on others to get the meaning right, and it can come across as weird or even offensive to Chinese or Japanese people who feel that you might be trivializing or insulting their ancient cultures with your atrociously bad translations. So the best advice is – don't. Unless you have done scrupulous research, maybe even taken time to learn Japanese or Chinese, and are fully aware and accepting of the cultural connotations!
Scroll down to see some funny words and cringeworthy examples of people getting it completely wrong for yourself, and let us know your thoughts on these epic translation fails in the comments!
#1
Late to party, saw a Canadian guy and asked him what he had asked the tattoo artist ”I asked him for some bad words, something really bad”. It’s said “economic recession”
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205points
#2
40+ year old bald white guy with Chinese characters that translated as “I’m a cute little princess” on the length of his forearm.
Had a good laugh the rest of that day.
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177points
#3
My buddy has "illiterate foreigner" in traditional Chinese characters. It's dope
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165points
#4
I saw this guy with Japanese characters that translated to “Beep Beep Lettuce”
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156points
#5
I was TDY in Japan for 90 days, and I didn't know very much Japanese at all, but the wife of a guy I worked with was fluent, and at a small command function she pointed out this complete asshat of a guy at the detachment I was with whose back tat read "child changing station". He told everyone it was something like "strength, loyalty, determination".
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148points
#6
My wife is Chinese and the best one she has personally seen was "fat dumb American" on a guys leg.
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136points
#7
I knew a girl at university who had some Chinese characters down her arm.
Came in one hot summer day and I finally saw the whole thing.
It said; Emergency exit. Do not block.
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131points
#8
Wanted a tattoo in Chinese that said "I am a vegetarian," got a tattoo that said "I am made of vegetables."
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128points
#9
I probably shouldn’t be saying this as the person who had this done to them is my best friend but...sh!t...here we go again... My best friend who we’ll call Sarah got a tattoo when she was 16 (where I live, you’re supposed to be 18) her dad passed away about 3 years ago and she wanted to get a tattoo on her wrist to remember him...instead of getting his name which would’ve been easier...she decided she wanted to get “dad” in Japanese...it’s been 2 years since then and I still haven’t told her that it says “turtle” I know that she’ll hate herself if she finds out and to be 100% honest...I kinda like it...I was actually thinking of getting it on my wrist too...my dad passed away when I was only 11 so she’d think I got a tattoo saying dad as well but I’d actually just be getting a pretty hilarious tattoo that I kinda love... I just want to add...if I suddenly go missing...blame it on my best friend
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125points
#10
Buddy of mine got a tattoo with his friends. He wanted it to say something like "honor" or "loyalty" or some dumb s**t, but it actually says "free eggroll with combo purchase"
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124points
#11
I once saw this middle aged dude wearing "金魚佬" on his shoulder (the rough literary translation is "Goldfish Man"), which in cantonese means a sleazy older man who creeps on younger girls/children. Basically a pedo. Wonder under what circumstances he got that inked...
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114points
#12
I have 'Monkey' on my wrist because that's my Chinese zodiac. I know it's accurate because a Chinese guy asked me if I knew what it meant, and I'm sure he thought I would say 'faith' or 'love' or something, so when I said 'monkey' he looked so relieved. His friend was like 'you have GOT to stop doing that!'
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109points
#13
my friend got "translator server error" tattooed on his arm. needless to say he wasn't very happy after i told him
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109points
#14
My boyfriend got tattooed before we met and he meant to get warrior(士) tattooed on him, but the lines are wrong so it really means dirt (土). The bottom line is supposed to be shorter than the top line. His nickname in my family is now doro-chan which is basically a cute way of saying dirt boy.
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107points
#15
I can read Chinese and I met a guy who wanted to get a tattoo that said "Hope" so i guess they looked it up in the dictionary and tattooed the first 2 characters after "hope" which were "名子“
which says "noun"
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97points
#18
He thought it said “Love my grandson”. It translated to something like “I love fat boys”. I think it was a google translate failure of epic proportions
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86points
#19
Man flexed his tattoo to me in a supermarket claiming it said 'wisdom'. It meant 'meat'.
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84points
#20
I didn’t see it, but I went with a friend to get a piercing, and I heard a guy say, I don’t like the way that looks, can you change this line and make the ends do this. The tattoo artist said, “Yea, but that changes the word, you might be going from brave to gay woman for all I know. You can’t change kanji symbols and still have it mean the same thing.”
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81points