Comments

I know it's cool having a tattoo in Chinese characters but
just be careful when choosing them! Some characters might have
several meanings and totally different from what you actually expecting!
What I recommend, is to check both Chinese & Japanese meanings

and always make sure that you and the artist know well about it.
I can't express this enough because it's quite embarrassing to see
people with wrong characters in their arms, legs, etc.

One common tattoo character, for instance, is '

' meaning
'peaceful or serenity' in Chinese. It sounds pretty good and no wonder
if someone goes for it, but I won't recommend this character to be used.
It has exactly the same meaning in Japanese except one extra 'cheap'.

The addition of this meaning does make a big difference... How will you
feel if you got this tattoo on you, or if you see someone with this tattoo
right in front of you??? Now you know how I felt when I found a girl with
this tattoo sitting in front of me, hah?

Well, the reason why I suddenly brought up all these tattoo stories is
because my flatmate Kaylee intends to have one and asked me some
questions. She wanted to know the difference between the two characters
standing for LOVE that appeared in her dictionary (ie. AI

& KOI

in Japanese). That's a tough question. Even explaining in Japanese wouldn't
be easier for me. I know the difference by feelings, but they are not
always in the same manner to be expressed in western cultures. Most
Japanese don't express their feelings torwards LOVE as strong as Westerns
do and it makes harder sometimes. I couldn't find any Japanese words that
fit 'true love' nicely either. I don't know how the meanings differ in Chinese,
but I hope she could get some idea after all.

I always find myself terrible in translating stuffs. I gained all the three
languages (Portuguese, Japanese, and English) mostly by feelings, so it's
hard to find the word/s that exactly matches the other. I can tell them if the
proposal word/s fits well or not, but I can't express them nicely. I wish
I were a well-balanced multi-lingual and make a use of it. Well, this is
another long long story so I talk about this later. Bye!


	Jazz May 16, 2005 09:50 AM PDT Hi there, it's me Jazz! firstly i should say maybe congratulation on your new blog "LaZy.....". Also i've actually had a comment on your another blog, TIMTAMSHOT, but let me talk about this issue again here. I really feel the same way as you feel towards having tatoo in Chinese ,that many people have one choosing from just English meening of it. Like the other day, I was wandering around Brisbane city and found a guy who has got a tatoo in Chinese saying "Tree　木".... I was like....'what the...!?' I dont know what the guy intended meaning it, but it's just so weird to see this word on somebody's arm... Sometimes i still wonder what he meat, like forest or nature? yeah, why not, he might be one of the member of Green Peace or that kind of stuff.... Anyway, the thing is that chinese character is not being used only in China but also in Japan and the meaning of word can be different literally. To comment about translation, in my case it's just English to Japanese though, I think it's important to understand feelings of speakers or writers, not word by word. In other words, when you translate or interpret one language into another language, the most important thing is the original meaning is still there. So, say "true love" this "true" has many meanings and how you decide the meaning of this depends on a person who used this word and what intended to mean. Japanese is really difficult language as others are, and even tiny difference makes a word completely another meaning. I, therefore, would say that ' Pure love', 'Real love' and 'True love' can be the same meaning in some contexts and cannot be. hum, this is so complicated...i dont know if i could explain fully in here...but use your feelings and understand me, please. haha