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Tattoos gone horribly wrong

 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages Post Reply
12 messages over 2 pages: 1
gogglehead
Triglot
Senior Member
Argentina
Joined 6075 days ago

248 posts - 320 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Russian, Italian

 
 Message 9 of 12
07 September 2010 at 11:54pm | IP Logged 
Doitsujin wrote:
gogglehead wrote:
I have tattoos in other languages, not all of which I speak.

Out of curiosity, why did you pick languages that you don't speak? Was it just the coolness factor?


Kind of. I chose the Japanese symbols because of the way they look, the kanji really are works of art. The Latin legend "Carpe Diem" has been something of a tagline for me over the years, and it seemed appropriate. I doubt I will get any more tattoos in languages that I don't speak, that's why I held back on the Hebrew one that I wanted!

G
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Polyglotted
Triglot
Newbie
Joined 5229 days ago

35 posts - 40 votes
Speaks: English*, Spanish, French
Studies: Russian, Swedish, Mandarin

 
 Message 10 of 12
08 September 2010 at 2:01am | IP Logged 
Search for hanzismatter on google. That blog never fails to make me laugh. The tattoos are terrible translations :)


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fireflies
Senior Member
Joined 5181 days ago

172 posts - 234 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 11 of 12
14 October 2010 at 3:07pm | IP Logged 
I looked through the hanzismatter site. I cannot believe that there are people that don't consult a book to check what they are getting before taking such a big decision.

I do not personally want a good tattoo so a bad tattoo seems bad indeed.
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Olympia
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5981 days ago

195 posts - 244 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Old English, French

 
 Message 12 of 12
24 October 2010 at 12:38am | IP Logged 
The funniest one I've seen was on an episode of the TLC show LA Ink. Kat Von D, the tattoo artist and star of the show, was raised in Los Angeles, California by Argentine parents and grew up speaking Spanish. A young man of Italian descent came into the shop on one episode, wanting a tattoo in Italian to honor his grandparents. He wanted "My family" written in Italian. He told Kat Von D to write "Mia famiglia," but obviously had no actual knowledge of Italian and did not know how to spell it, and just said it aloud. Kat wrote it phonetically as it would have been in Spanish, and the final tattoo read "Mia familia." The guy never noticed.

Another one I saw was on a cooking show called "Chef Academy." One of the students on the show decided to get her first tattoo to mark her experience on the show. The host and teacher of the academy on the show was French chef Jean-Christophe Novelli, so she decided to get a tattoo on her hip in French. Instead of "Bon vivant," she got "Bonne vivante," using the feminine form of the words. Chef Novelli immediately came out and told her it was wrong, and said in an interview on camera that the tattoo was "stupid" because it was incorrect. However, I have seen it written in the feminine meaning "(female) person who lives well," but I am not a native speaker so I'm not sure if "bonne vivante" is really incorrect as Chef Novelli said.


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