These days I see that more people have tattoos which consist of Chinese characters. I’m wondering if they really know what the words mean. I saw a man with tattoo that said “Stone man” in Chinese characters. Asians would think that a “Stone man” was a dumb person, with a head made of rock. Still, this weird tattoo is much better than something that is spelled wrong. I sometimes find one stroke is missing from the Chinese characters in their tattoos. So funny!
One day my friend was showing off his new T-shirt that said, “Bad Spirit” in Chinese. He might have thought the Chinese characters on his T-shirt would help him look cool. No Asian who can read Chinese would buy or wear that kind of T-shirt. Ever.
Chinese tattoos and shirts are funny for me, but some Asians wear shirts that are funny to Westerners.
My friend Ms.Jung, whom I met in America told me this story.
She said she went to a body shop to change the oil in her car. While waiting, she felt she was being watched and laughed at by the employees working in the shop. Ms. Jung said the workers definitely seemed to talk about her. She had no idea what was wrong.
When she came home to change her clothes, she found out the reason. She was wearing her 16 year old daughter’s T-shirt that said, “Who farted?!” in English. For reference, Ms.Jung was in her 50s.
One of my friends had a package from her parents from Korea in which there were some T-shirts and sneakers. She couldn’t wear a few items. One T-shirt said, “Mohawk” and there were some cool looking shoes, but upon a closer look, she decided not to wear them because they were printed densely with bad words in English. “mother-fu…, stupid, assho…”
lol,
By the way, Sebastien, when you laugh loudly, do you sometimes fall off your chair? Your expression is also funny.
Thx for the links.
Haha that story actually made me laugh out loud.
^^Sebastien, that last one is hecka funny lol
Ok it looks like this is way more common than I ever could have imagines. Lets see how many of these it takes to make Maangchi laugh so loud she fall off her chair:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/art_treyu/209080260/in/set-72157594227666274/
Haha that’s very funny. I love how you turned that around. Many people are already aware that having chinese writting as a tatoo or shirt design can be a bad idea. But I never thought about how people in asia might end up with the same problem using european languages. Haha. Although the bad english on consumer products like food packaging is pretty well known.
http://www.reallywarped.com/badengrish.htm
Z