Kamis, 25 Oktober 2007

Tatt's ink-redibly unfunny

The Sun recently printed an article about a man named Vince Mattingley and his tattoo. Since The Sun is a tabloid newspaper, I don't really believe the story. Then again, look at all the people I have documented here in my own site.


http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article369654.ece

According to the article, means "Coca-Cola".

That is absolutely nonsense.

The two-character phrase actually mean "crooked official".

Plus, Coca-Cola is 可口可樂 in Chinese & コカ・コーラ in Japanese.

Rabu, 12 September 2007

Kanye West Sucks Stronger & Harder

Kanye "George Bush Does Not Care About Black People" West has just released a new album called Graduation.


video

Alan and I both have watched the video, and he has documented the following errors:

Tian,

That's pretty funny. Some of it seems to make sense, but it is all written in katakana, which is rather hard to read, especially as it flashes by so quickly. It is also sort of like reading a children's story written for preschoolers, who would not be assumed to be able to read kanji. Somehow the "baby talk" style of writing clashes with the "tough guy" image of the video.

Sometimes katakana is used to convey a robotic style of speaking, though.

I was initially optimistic that the katakana flashing on the screen might make some sense, since one of the first ones appeared to be ストロンガ which is in fact the transliteration of "Stronger," the name of the tune and this is flashed on the screen when Kanye sings the word. But my optimism did not hold out long.



This was followed by ヨリナガク which is the katakana version of より長く or the translation of "longer." This is not quite right because "I can't wait much longer" is sung, and the grammar doesn't match in context. And it seems odd that one of the words "stronger" would be transliterated as if it were a name, and the other word "longer" would be translated.



The first katakana bit in the video コセロ [kosero] at first didn't make any sense. It is flashed when the lyrics "that which don't kill me" are sung, so I can only assume it is supposed to mean "kill" but this would be 殺せ [korose] and would be written コロセ [korose] instead of コセロ [kosero] in katakana. So evidently they had some editing problems or a dyslexic typist. Anyway, the katakana doesn't match the lyrics because 殺せ is the imperative form, as in the order "Kill!"

The next one isn't too bad. He sings "right now" and イマスグ appears. This is the katakana version of 今直ぐ, which is in fact a good translation of "right now."

Then we see イマオマエガヒツヨウダ (ima omae ga hitsuyou da = 今おまえが必要だ) which is a good translation of "I need you right now."



But things went downhill from there. Some bits like ガンバレ (ganbare) are presumably supposed to be real words in Japanese, but this is misspelled so that it actually reads ガソバレ (gasobare), which makes no sense. I also can't see why it appears there.

Other katakana looks just like gibberish, but it flashes by so quickly I can't read it properly. The single characters (ne), (gi), (te), (za) and (yo) appear for seemingly no reason.

At one point I saw キガクルウ (ki ga kuruu = 気が狂う) or "to go crazy" which seems to match the lyric "go ape."



I am mystified by some bits like タツセイシロ (tatsuseishiro). What is this supposed to mean? Is this an error for タッセイシロ (note the small )? If so, it would be 達成しろ or "achieve it!" (But achieve what?) This mistake of using instead of ッ appears to be typical of typing by a non-Japanese typist that cannot tell the difference.

Another bit オレハコロサレナイ (ore ha korosarenai = 俺は殺されない) appears when the lyric "don't kill me" is sung, but the Japanese literally means "I cannot be killed." It is followed by …ハオレヲツヨクスルダケダ… (...ha ore wo tsuyoku suru dake da... = は俺を強くするだけだ) which does mean "... will only make me stronger..."

The lyric "I need you to hurry up" is appropriately accompanied by イマスグイソグンダ (ima sugu isogunda = 今直ぐ急ぐんだ).

In one scene, the nurse looks into a room and screams and "タスケテ!"appears as a sort of subtitle. This is a literal translation of "Help!" the phrase usually used where someone is captured and needs to be rescued -- the damsel in distress's classic cry. But it seems a bit incongruous for a professional nurse to call for security this way.

One bit レダケオマエヲ (re dake omae wo) seems to have been part of a longer phrase with both ends cut off for some reason.

The subtitles for the security guards' lines -- ウゴクナ! (ugoku na! = 動くな!) (Don't move!), トマレ! (tomare! = 止まれ!) (Stop!) and ナンダコレハ…? (nanda kore ha...?) (What the...?) -- appear to be fine, except that the typist continues to confuse with . So ナンダ [nanda] actually is the nonsensical ナソダ [nasoda].

Anyway, overall it seems like they did actually have a real translator translate some bits, but probably they gave the translator only extremely short bits of text to translate, which were translated out of context. And then they had a non-Japanese typist create the titles, so additional errors were introduced at that stage.

By the way, I like Daft Punk's version of this song much better than Kanye West's.

Alan

And I like this version as well.

Rabu, 05 September 2007

ESPN & Matt Roth of Miami Dolphins

Dustin Chinn of Comedy Central (All Hail to Jon Stewart) spotted this giant (spring) on ESPN's website.


http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/index

Neither of us understood what ESPN's intention of plastering this particular character on their site, especially when Spring is NFL's offseason.

After reading the site, the only I can think of is the "haiku" theme. Even with that, why didn't ESPN just use ?

Later Stacy emailed me this photo of Miami Dolphins' Matt Roth.


larger view

According to a 2005 interview with Pro Football Weekly, Roth claimed "I got some Chinese writing — my last name."

Roth is correct about they are simplified Chinese characters, however I really doubt his last name is .

Senin, 20 Agustus 2007

Joyful Life

Jason V. from Brazil has sent me two photos of work done by Stanley of STATTOO in Minas Gerais.

The first one was just three characters thrown together, but the second one was terrible:


http://sp2.fotologs.net/photo/50/59/58/stattoo/1174402499_f.jpg

Not only these five characters are randomly thrown together, the second one does not even exist, and fourth one is upside down!

Amber's Tattoo from Big Brother 8

I don't watch reality television shows, therefore I have no idea who Amber is. Apparently she is one of the house guests in Big Brother 8.

HS reader & Big Brother 8 watcher Jenn G. emailed me this screen shot of Amber's tattoo,



According to Jenn G., in one of the previous episodes, Amber claimed her tattoos are:

Family
Strength
Honor
Wisdom

If anyone has seen the particular episode, please confirm if Amber has made such claim.

Selasa, 07 Agustus 2007

The Banta Family

This person went to Charlie at Asylum Tattoo of Covington, Kentucky and got some names tattooed, assuming they are family members names. The end result is posted in BMEzine's gallery dated Aug. 4, 2007.


http://bmeink.com/A70804/high/bmepb577039.jpg

My fellow katakana tattoo connoisseur Alan has this to say:

As these things go, I guess this one is not so bad. It appears to be the names of people in a family, with the family name バンタ [Banta] written horizontally and the given names ジム [Jim], アネット [Annette] and タナー [Tanner] written vertically under it.

The tattoo artist did make a mistake in that the final stroke in the name Tanner should be vertical instead of horizontal. This appears to be a common mistake that we also saw on Kimberley's tattoo.

Pocket-Sized Book

Reader Lynn sent me this photo of a pair men's swimming shorts from Wal-Mart. Since she is a Japanese major, it was odd to her to see hiragana characters meaning "pocket-sized book" printed on the shorts.




I confirmed this with Alan, and he says:

The hiragana is clearly しゅうちんぼん [shuuchinbon], which is the Japanese reading of , meaning a "pocket-sized book" which was perhaps the size of today's paperback books, a handy size for carrying in the sleeves of kimono.

But as to why someone would want to have this written on their swimming trunks, I have no idea. Bizarre!

Of course, we both think it was meant to be a jab at the wearer's testicle size or the popular sport of pocket pool.


P.s. why do people still shop at Wal-Mart?!