• whoisearth@lemmy.ca
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    2 years ago

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

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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    2 years 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
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      2 years 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
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      2 years 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
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        2 years 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.

  • Ilovethebomb@lemmy.ml
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    2 years 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
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      2 years 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.

  • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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    2 years 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.

  • Dojan@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

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

  • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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    2 years 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.

  • fne8w2ah@lemmy.world
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    2 years 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).

  • NewAgeOldPerson@lemmy.world
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    2 years 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.

  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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    2 years 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…

  • Comment105@lemm.ee
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    2 years ago

    The Chinese characters / text is 变態外人

    (romanized “biàn tài wàirén”)

    Interestingly, Japanese uses the same characters for hentai, 変態. Tai is notably pronounced the same / similarly, while biàn / hen are different.

    • billy_bollocks@sh.itjust.works
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      2 years ago

      Lol all of the mid 20’s to mid 30’s hipster chicks with arm sleeves are down voting you.

      I have a couple of tats I got with my squad in Iraq when I was in the Army. Explaining those tats to those same younger hipster gals never seems to go over well.

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    How many Chinese people and places have mistranslated a word into English as “fuck?” I can’t remember which word it is, some kind of food. So ya’know, glass houses and all that.