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Calligraphy is a traditional art form in China and Japan, so it seems to me like many people there recognize the beauty of the characters. Some people just want an excuse to hate on other people (and for some reason tattoos on other people really draw this behavior out).
Getting a tattoo is a more or less permanent decision. It’s soooo very important to make sure tattooed people understand they made a bad decision, because it’s permanent! Otherwise I won’t feel better about me and my boring small minded self :(
Also of people are aware of what it says, or that there’s no grammar involved, or it’s off the real script a bit, they really do just like the calligraphy.
Compare the OP with some actual Chinese artists doing Chinese calligraphy tattoos - for example in Hong Kong or Taiwan (some of the photos are a bit NSFW, so be warned)
There is a bit of difference between “Chinese calligraphy” and “write me a list of words in plain Chinese characters”
I have no problem with people tattooing whatever they want on themselves btw - but it’s true that from the perspective of someone who can read Chinese, these tattoos (like in the OP) are not “beautiful Chinese characters” or “calligraphy” - they do come across as mostly just confusing lists of strangely formatted and crudely written random words.
Yeah I appreciate that there are certainly a lot of bad tattoos that involve Chinese characters. The one shown is probably one of them. I just don’t think westerners who use Chinese characters deserve special scorn. There are a lot of bad tattoos that involve western lettering as well.
This site is now dead, but it used to be one of my favorites. It’s someone who would translate the Asian-language tattoos people would send in. A lot of them were not even using real symbols or letters, but a lot of others were hilarious.
https://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/
This is one of their last posts and, to be fair to them, it’s pretty hard to continue a blog like that once your irony meter has exploded.
That one is probably temporary, at least. During the first few weeks, tattoo ink can be rubbed away every time you wash your hands. You also have a lot of nerves on that side of your hand and the needle hurts like hell. So you go through a lot of pain for something that gets washed away.
It’s probably plain ink.
I have a wedding ring tattoo, and the guy who did it strongly discouraged me from going 100% of the way around. Pain kicked up quite a bit when it hit the fleshy part in between fingers.
Wait, so did you go 100% around anyway?
Nah, just down the sides.
Yeah, a lot of them are in the gibberish font, but there are some entries where they’re like “that’s not even the gibberish font, I have no idea what the hell that is, what is going on here?!”
Chinese writing is a vast world of art and ideas, with probably over 30 thousand different characters, nobody knows for sure how many there are. Not knowing what a character is, to strip it of meaning or cultural baggage, kind of frees one up to appreciate the rhythm and delicate balance of lines as their own thing.
Then again, you do not want to end up with PIG SWAMP MOUNTAIN DWARF NOODLE in permanent ink on your skin.If you want to see Ewan McGregor naked and his body covered in Chinese calligraphy, sometime between Trainspotting and Star Wars, do check out Peter Greenaway’s bonkers visual masterpiece The Pillow Book.
Well, three of those five words are awesome together. SWAMP MOUNTAIN DWARF.
PIG SWAMP MOUNTAIN DWARF NOODLE
Perfectly explainable.
“Pig Swamp” was our frat name in college.
“Mountain Dwarf Noodle” was my nickname.
If you want to see Ewan McGregor naked and his body covered in Chinese calligraphy
Uh yes please!
google translate, translated that as:
Independence River is curious and ruthless
btw the Independence River is capitalized because it is interpreting it as a name, the word is just independence.
not bad in the realm of Chinese tattoos
Right? A lot of the worse ones are menu items
kanji look so much more like art than the latin alphabet do, to us
But kanji is limited in font choices.
This is a tattoo, not a computer. They can do any kind of stylization they want. Make the vertical lines fire and the horizontal lines ice. Do a lightning bolt for any tick mark. Etc.
back of left hand: 愛
back of right hand: 恨Sure “WATER” looks dull if written in boring Arial 10 font with caps lock, but if you add a bit of pizzazz it would look fine as a tattoo. Esp. If you are a non-English speaker.
𝓦𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓻
𝖂𝖆𝖙𝖊𝖗
𝕎𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕣
Now do pizzazz with a bit of pizzazz.
Pizza party pizzazz
Miller Lite
So many Chinese character tattoos are done in the Chinese equivalent of boring Arial 10 font though, that’s part of the point. The one in the photo is at least hand written, but by someone with poor aesthetic sense, it still looks dull and ugly.
Is there a fancy old Chinese font? What about wing dings?
There are different Chinese fonts (in print/computer context) and also different Chinese historical scripts, each with different styles of writing, and finally a very diverse variety of calligraphy styles.
The idea of what is considered “old”, “fancy” and “fancy old” doesn’t necessarily map the same way as it does in Latin/Western writing in general, the cultural and historical sensibility and connotations are often quite different, although in most broad sense, you could find some style analogues to achieve a similar vibe, but it would be quite context dependent.
Thanks for the explanation! Now I want to fuck with people by telling them they used the Chinese version of wing dings.
The one in the photo is probably still a font. How many tattoo artists would know how to write in Chinese calligraphy.
To me it looks done by hand, the inconsistencies in character sizes and stroke widths wouldn’t be seen in an actual font. The 独 also looks very hand drawn, the vertical strokes on 無 as well. It’s very “textbook” calligraphy, done by someone who knows the strokes and has some practice, but dull and with no personality, and still a degree of insecurity and inconsistency in the strokes, so perhaps a late beginner to intermediate level student of calligraphy. Not necessarily by the tattoo artist either, it could have been tattooed from a template written on paper.
Chinese characters in “arial” font would be monowidth lines, no serifs, no real pizzaz. The tattoo in the picture is how I see most Chinese character tattoos. This is still stylized a bit.
Sure, but tattoos in sans serif fonts are still super common, and honestly, it makes little difference, the one in OP is still basic as fuck - call it Times New Roman instead of Arial. It reads like plain text to a Chinese reader, not some kind of calligraphy - what you call “stylized” is actually just the default original textbook stroke style of the standard script. The sans serif version with monowidth lines is actually more of a modern stylized form of that.
Old English script always makes the word look like a different word, like water here looks like bater.
Go away. Watin’.
“Don’t drink from the master water, link! It is too salty!”
Your 2nd sample reads ‘Bater’
िપƈᛕ ѻिि
Any better?
Don’t talk back to the master
So I slipped up.
Exactly. The characters are in a pretty nice calligraphy font, with tapered edges and slight flourishes. The letters are in the ugliest block print possible.
Reminds me of someone who have the Chinese word for “refrigerator” on his right shoulder, and when Chinese people would point and laugh about it, he would roll up his sleeve from his left shoulder where there is a tattoo of a fridge
Get the word for Japanese written out in Chinese.
I knew lemmy would get it! Didn’t expect the picture instead of just name dropping the good place. Way to go above and beyond.
日語 happens to mean Japanese Language, in both written Chinese and Japanese.
Same for 日本人 (Japanese Person)
日語 technically means Japanese language in Japanese, but no one ever uses it-- I think it’s an outdated usage. Everyone uses 日本語 these days.
Some of the letters should be upside down or backwards to get the full “Tattoo in a language I can’t read” experience,
Si what DOES her tattoo say?
独立 independent/independence
無情 heartless/heartlessness
好奇 curiosityAnd something more under her shirt
With some of the word written vertically and some horizontally for whatever reason
Thank you very much.
She’s proud of being heartless? Gross.
Undead people deserve respect too
Ok but what does his tattoo say?
Dude!
Sweet!
Rick fucked me!
W
A
T
E
ROh cool thanks!
NP, its a hard legnuage to pick up
legnuage
水
Mizu
According to Google translate the visible part says: “Independent, curious and ruthless” which isn’t that bad of a text.
Hydro homies out here loving both.
The last one is 狡猾 which means “sly”
It came with “Independence River is curious and ruthless” to me… interesting
Wouldn’t it be more like this?
It’s more like this
Bruh what? Imagine thinking water - the bringer of life - isn’t cool enough to warrant getting a tattoo of it. I hope his mouth remains eternally slightly dry.
It’s the universal solvent
Moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.
- Derek Zoolander
Definitely. Live and drink.
Def not a hydro homie
Even if it does look dumb to you, why not be considerate and leave them alone. “hey I’d like to make you self conscious about that permanent ink you have on your skin”. Smh
China: Makes the most beautiful calligraphy writing where every word is a pleasure to write and see. Also China: It says ‘Soup’ down your arm, man. Why are you writing Soup all down your arm?
To express my love for the soup store.
