from: Joseph B.
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Wed, May 13, 2009 at 10:45 PM
subject: Does this tat really mean this?

Love your website and had to ask you.

The owner of this tat claims it says "Only god will judge me", is this true? I have heard it means something about being a slave??

Thanks for your help!!!!

JB



The top character may intended to be 大 (large or great), however it is the wrong character, 丈.

In Japanese, 大帝 refers to a "great emperor", which does not mean Christian God. 神様 is used when referring to the Christian God. Other words for God are 主 (literally "the Lord") and 天主 ("the Lord in Heaven").

上帝 is used in Chinese when referring to Christian God. 真主 and 阿拉 typically used for Allah, the Islamic name for God. Funny thing is that 阿拉 means "we" or "I" in Shanghai dialect.

大帝, 玉帝, and 玉皇 are variants of 玉皇大帝, Jade Emperor, from Chinese Taoism mythology. The Goa'uld System Lord Yu from Stargate SG-1 is based on this. Ironically the production company did not cast a Chinese actor for this role, rather Vincent Crestejo.

The verb 裁く [sabaku] does mean "to judge" and 僕 [boku] is a common word that Japanese males refer to themselves, meaning "me" or "I". 裁 means "to cut" in Chinese and sometimes it is associated with tailoring. 僕 means only "servant" in Chinese.

But unfortunately, the grammar and word order of the sentence 大帝裁僕 is not proper for Japanese, so it looks sort of "Chinese" to a Japanese person. A Japanese person could possibly try to read it in 漢文 style, giving the sentence:

大帝は僕を裁く [Taitei ha boku wo sabaku.]

The character 僕 is also read "shimobe" meaning manservant, so the phrase could also mean:

"The great emperor judges the manservant"

or

"The great emperor's tailor"

It doesn't really mean what it is supposed to mean, in either Japanese or Chinese.

I have received several emails from readers to inform me about one webisode from NBC's The Office.





In the video, Andy Bernard made an announcement that claimed his tattoo is "nard dog".

Although it is not exactly "nard dog", "n 狗" (n dog) is close enough.

Alan and I are very curious about this Madsteel woman's tattoos:



We have no idea what those six characters across the top of her back mean.

The same person also posted many of her photos in BMEzine.com, like this one:


http://www.bmeink.com/A40403/high/iam00022266.jpg

What does 喜 and 壽 have to do with Madsteel?

The most interesting ones are on her feet:


http://www.bmeink.com/A90318/high/f4dt-madsteels-footie.jpg

I don't think 鉄狂 has any significance in Chinese. (If she had 鉄拳 from the video game Tekken tattooed on her hands, that would be awesome.)

Alan's guess is that it could be "railway fan" or "railway maniac" in Japanese. Railway workers call them "foamers" (those guys that know the names and car types of every single piece of railcar traveling over the rails and Details magazine recently had an article about these railway fans.)

Remember the movie Trainspotting? In Japanese, railway is 鉄道 and 狂い is a common suffix for a maniacal fan of something, so 鉄道狂い could be shortened to 鉄狂.

Judging from the name of the poster, we guess her feet tattoo are supposed to be a sort of
translation of "Madsteel" but if so, shouldn't it be in the order 狂鉄? Notice this young lady has the same two characters tattooed on both feet, but in opposite order.

Also, 鉄 is only iron and steel should be 鋼.

Interestingly enough, there is a Japanese punk song by バミューダ バガボンド (Bermuda Vagabond) with the same title.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=225122

In April 22nd's episode of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, they have an obviously edit an image of Karl Rove's body with tattoos. Approximately 7' 30" into the show, Jon points out one tattoo, "the Chinese symbol for tenacity", but it is in fact the traditional character for love - 愛.



This is not the first time TDS made fun of members of the GOP. Previous butt of their joke was Condi Rice.


PS. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is a parody show made by Comedy Central. I don't want to have more humorless dimwits like this one and this one email in to tell me Karl Rove or Condi Rice does not have any tattoos.

http://www.wickedink.com.au/gallery:48:Oriental:image:132

Alan and I are confused by this tattoo. We are not sure if it is correct or not, simply because we have never seen this idiom.

From the last three characters, we can sort of guessing this person wanted "death before dishonor". However, Chinese idiom for it would be:

寧死不屈

凌辱 is used in both Chinese & Japanese to mean an insult, indignity, disgrace or violation, even to assault a woman. So we can sort of see how 凌 might imply "dishonor" and 不屈 does mean "fortitude" or "indomitable".

But we simply do not understand the grammar or syntax of 凌死不屈, since 凌 could also mean "pure; virtuous; insult; maltreat, encroach; soar; thick ice".

It simply sounds like the words "dishonor" "death" and "indomitable" run together.

Another winner from Checkoutmyink.com with caption stating the three characters are his girlfriend's initials.



Apparently this man did not receive the memo about there is no such thing as "Chinese initials for English names".



Beyond that, we have no clue what exactly the initials are supposedly to be.

Update: Reader Becki and others have noticed the initials may be "LBP" (somehow it reminds me of O. P. P. aka. Other People's Pussy by Naughty By Nature) written in a font that mimics pseudo-Chinese, i.e. The Choy Suey Font.

By the way, chop suey is not an authentic Chinese dish, rather according to legend it is from table scraps.


Mental Floss magazine, May-June 2009 issue, page 19.

Alan and I spotted this "naughty" tattoo in Checkoutmyink.com,


http://checkoutmyink.com/tattoos/lucretia/naughty-1

However, the middle character 皮 is completely wrong.



Actually 顽皮 would be sufficient to be used as adjective, where 顽皮的 is an adverb. Addition to that, the tattooed "naughty" does not have same innuendo in English. It is usually used to describe bratty children, as I would call them,

crotch sneeze fuck trophies.