I purchased a Camelbak 100 oz Unbottle from REI yesterday, here is its multilingual instruction card.

However traditional version of Chinese had many of its characters missing, replaced with underscores, while the simplified version is intact.

These two t-shirts are for sale at local Target store.

Both characters printed on this Lucky Lu's Casino t-shirt are upside-down. One character is 溫, meaning "warm", and the other resembles 殿, is "temple". I have no idea what "warm temple" had any association with casino.

I have no idea what the character on the left is. One on the right is 誕, "birth".

from: Jenn

to: "tiangotlost@gmail.com"
date: Sun, May 30, 2010 at 10:50 PM

subject: Misrepresented chinese tattoo

Hi my name is jenn I got this. Tattoo seven years ago it was supposed to say destiny in Chinese, however I've been searching online for this symbol but can't seem to find it, the destiny symbol does come close to what this looks like! In desperate need of translation help. thanx

The common phrase for "destiny" in Chinese would be 命運. Character shown here is Japanese variant of 緣, which could be interpret as "fate". If not read carefully, Chinese readers would think it is 緑, which means "green".

from: CW
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Fri, May 7, 2010 at 1:08 PM
subject: Tattoo

Hi

I saw your blog and was hoping you might could help me. The image attached is that of a tattoo I got years ago without researching it. A friend drew it up for me and the symbols were something she copied from a tattoo magazine she had. I'm now starting to regret it because I have no clue what the symbols actually mean. The picture isn't the greatest but hopefully you can see it clearly enough. Can you help me out please?

Thanks,

CW



I don't recognize the top character, but the bottom one resembles 草 or 革.

CheckOutMyInk.com / Kanji

Uploaded in CheckOutMyInk.com by Ikon720:


http://www.checkoutmyink.com/tattoos/ikon720/kanji-86

Alan and I are curious what is the reasoning behind such large tattoo. Even more, large tattoo with an obvious error in it.

CheckOutMyInk.com / Promise To

Upload in CheckOutMyInk.com by Jennafur with caption:

My gf & I both have this on our left hips. It says "promise to" b/c we made a promise to be in each others lives, no matter what happens. She is a wonderful person & I want her in my life always... regardless of our relationship.


http://www.checkoutmyink.com/tattoos/jennafur/hip-promise-to

However 允 does not mean "promise", but "permit, to allow".

"Strong Willed Woman"

from: Jaime S.
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Sat, Apr 24, 2010 at 2:21 PM
subject: So I got a tattoo...

Hey guys, my name's Mari. I've always been a fan of the blog, and I was wondering if you could verify my tattoo's meaning.

I'm a foreign language major, and I've studied both Mandarin and Japanese in the past. I decided to translate the meaning of "strong willed woman" into 英気女 (eiki onna). So... is this correct? I sure hope so!

I sent you a pic, too. Thanks a lot.

At the very least the characters are written correctly as if it was supposed to be Japanese.

Unfortunately, 英気女 does not mean "strong-willed woman" in Japanese.

It is more like "brilliant woman" or "woman of excellent ability" if they were to translate it literally. But even this is not a proper translation because 英気女 is not grammatically correct in Japanese.

It lacks the proper grammatical bits and such, so it sounds very brusque and looks sort of "faux Chinese" to a Japanese person. To be proper, they would need to be written 英気に富んだ女性 [eiki ni tonda josei] if "brilliant woman" was intended.

But it cannot be proper Chinese because the simplified character form 気 is used only in Japanese. In Chinese, only the character forms 氣 (traditional) or 气 (simplified) are used.

Another problem is that it seems quite inappropriately boastful and prideful for someone to tattoo themselves with "brilliant woman" in a Japanese context. One would only say this sort of thing about someone else, or as a goal to strive for, and not as a label on your own body. The most common usage of 英気 in Japanese is in the phrase 英気を養う [eiki wo yashinau] which means roughly to "rest up to be able to demonstrate one's full ability."

Certainly there are other, much better, ways of saying "strong-willed woman" in Japanese. One might be 意志の強い女性 [ishi no tsuyoi josei].

Better luck next time,

Alan & Tian