• Dojan@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    190
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    This is my favourite. 痔 means haemorrhoid. Presumably it was meant to say 侍, samurai.

  • whoisearth@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    184
    ·
    1 year ago

    I mean we can probably all visualize the person who had that tattoo and “foreign pervert” probably fits them perfectly.

    • Kythtrid@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      31
      ·
      1 year ago

      And honestly a pretty hillarious phrase to tattoo when some white foreigner rolls up asking for a “Lover of Asian Beauty” tattoo.

  • Ilovethebomb@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    82
    ·
    1 year ago

    Where I live, we get a number of used vehicles imported from Japan, and for a while it was trendy to have English slogans on vehicles.

    They frequently made little sense, I imagine our ones look the same to them.

    • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      37
      ·
      1 year ago

      You wouldn’t happen to remember any would you? For some reason I love those “Why is a mouse when it spins? The higher the fewer.” type things.

        • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          16
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          I was having difficulty understanding my Chinese boss one day, and after the third time I asked in total confusion, “What?” He looked at me and asked, “Why you not understand me, am I no speaking English?” I cracked us both up with my reply of, “No, you’re clearly speaking Chinglish!”

          • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            28
            ·
            1 year ago

            Her: I am struggling with two words.

            Me: Ok.

            Her: Fuck and fuck.

            Me: umm

            Her: the first one is like a thing for eating a meal.

            Me: Oh! Ok “fork” is what you eat with and “fuck” is what you do in private or yell when something goes wrong.

            Her: Say it again.

            (Multiple minutes later of me saying fork and fuck)

            Her: So I eat with a for-K and f-U-ck in private.

            Me: You got it, now go and fork yourself.

            (Me getting hit with a pillow multiple times while laughing)

            • LucyLastic@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              7
              ·
              1 year ago

              I have this sort of thing all the time here in Spain, though with shit/sheet.

              There’s plenty going the other way too, of course. At least I don’t mistake miedo and mierda these days …

              • HardlightCereal@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                4
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                One time I misremembered my Japanese teacher’s mnemonic and wrote that my grandpa was married to noodles.

                Teacher told us grandma is sofu because she has a sore foot from kicking grandpa’s ass. I remembered it as sore bum instead, and changed grandma to soba

                • hark@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  3
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Sofu (祖父) is grandpa. Sobo (祖母) is grandma, which is even closer to soba.

      • skulkingaround@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        1 year ago

        Not OP but the Toyota MR2 had the following text on the rear window on some units:

        Mature sporty personal

        More innovation more adult

        A man in dandism

        Powered midship specialty

      • Ilovethebomb@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        I’m trying to remember some of them, or find a photo. I can’t remember what model of vehicle they were though.

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    68
    ·
    1 year ago

    Wasn’t a tattoo, but a motorcycle decal. This dude had a Kawasaki crotch rocket with five kanji characters on it. Posted it to a forum, and this weeb says “lol where’d you get that?” dude answers all defensively “From the mall, why?” Weeb says “It says pig bird pig lizard dog.” “No dude, it says N-I-N-J-A.” He thought kanji characters translated directly to the latin alphabet.

    • Resistentialism@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      Damn, I kinda wanna play my English ninja wkth the Japanese word for ninja. But I do not want to end up like that.

    • FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Wait did the characters look like the letters for ninja or was it the (I’m assuming Japanese) equivalent of the letter n then I and so on

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        I don’t precisely remember, I’m recalling a forum post I read at least a decade ago, but I do recall that he had at least tried to literally translate the letters “NINJA” to Asian text beyond just picking some McDojo font. I don’t know if he had attempted to find kanji characters that looked relatively like latin letters or if someone convinced him that “This one means N” or something.

  • fne8w2ah@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    67
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Not really related, but a couple of years ago in my home country, a Western bloke was actually pictured on the internet wearing a shirt that said something like “白人很笨” (white people are stupid).

    • chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      81
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Some of us buy those ironically though. I had a shirt that said (and I unfortunately cannot put it in kana/Kanji atm) something very close to, in full kana and kanji: “I am a stupid American. I’ll buy anything.”

      I knee fully what it meant because the sentence was pretty easy, but I still wanted to travel to Japan wearing it.

    • Etterra@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Well I mean it’s not wrong. Everybody’s stupid, it’s just a matter of quantity and context.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    63
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    There’s a great website documenting this. I’m surprised no one has linked to it.

    https://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/

    Example:

    Ariana Grande’s new tattoo, 七輪.

    She wanted it to promote and celebrate her latest single, 7 Rings.

    Instead it is referencing to a type of Japanese charcoal cooking grill.

  • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    43
    ·
    1 year ago

    I have a friend that has Thai writing tattooed on his leg that translates to “I love chicken soup.”

    I think when he was drunk he went into a tattoo parlor thinking it was a restaurant.

  • NewAgeOldPerson@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    41
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’ve seen a few Sanskrit ones. Nothing drastic in real life, thankfully. I find the Chinese ones much more hilarious.

    Had a friend in college legit get ancient Chinese calligraphy. Absolutely beautiful. But my international center buddy told me separately it just meant window. It was supposed to be this heavenly view or some such thing. No. It was window.

  • happilybitchycowboy@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    26
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Why not? I got Vete a la Mierda tattooed on my arm when I was young and still learning Spanish. Occasionally, I’ve had the great opportunity to pull my sleeve up.

  • Jikal@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    1 year ago

    I saw a pic that supposedly said “egg fried rice”. I wouldn’t even be mad

  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    20
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    A friend of mine wanted a tattoo in french, she speaks it but not fluently, I found a quote for her that she loved, she transcribed it to paper to bring it to the tattoo artist… I think she transcribed it from memory because she made a mistake in the text and I never had the heart to tell her (small word missing or something like that)… And it’s a very long quote in a straight line on her vertebral column, so it’s not easy to hide if she wears something more revealing…

  • floofloof@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    1 year ago

    When I was a kid I remember a clothing store getting in trouble because it was selling underpants with an artistic Arabic lettering design. They hadn’t checked what it said, but it turned out to say “There is no god but God and Mohammed is his prophet.” Having this on underpants didn’t please anyone.