Monday, September 24, 2007

cultural exchange

You probably already know about Engrish, where people like you and me can enjoy the haphazard usage of English words in Japan. But perhaps Hanzi Smatter, "dedicated to the misuse of chinese characters in western culture," has escaped your notice. They cover everything, but their main topic is tattoos. Like this one. Which makes no sense.

Seriously. Why would you devote time, money, pain, and eternal skin real estate to something without having an actual Chinese person proofread it first? Or, if you picked Japanese, a Japanese person? Although you can't always tell with these tattoos which language they were going for.

6 comments:

J-Vo said...

I have 3 wall hangings from Target, each sporting its own Chinese character. They SUPPOSEDLY say "peace, tranquility, harmony," but that's just me taking their word for it. THey could very well say "jerk" "stupidhead" and "loserface."

towwas said...

Heh. Take a picture - we can discuss.

J-Vo said...

Since my new camera arrived today, I can actually do that.

towwas said...

Ooh! Is it just like my camera?

J-Vo said...

Nah, we decided to go with the one that the extra-nuclear-powered blurry picture stabilizer...given the active nature of our most popular photo subject.

towwas said...

:) Good plan. I think mine has an anti-shake thing, but I hardly ever use it.