Americans walking around with wrong Chinese tattoos  

老美爱“秀”中文刺青耍酷 不知其意令人捧腹(图)

像“棺材佬”这种让人啼笑皆非的中文刺青，在美国人身上并不少见。比如“丑”、“杀害他们全部，让神整理他们”、“狗所”、“无料”、“迅笨”、“自律乐”等让人费解的中文刺青，都被美国人刺在身上到处晃悠。他们也不知道这些中文刺青是什么意思，有的甚至是在刺的时候，师傅告诉了他们错误的意思。[查看全文]

(ECNS) -- Tattoos of awkward Chinese characters are commonly seen on Americans, as some of the tattoo owners just admire the coolness of Chinese characters, regardless of their meaning, while others are vulnerable to honest mistakes, the World Journal (US) said.

Chen Yao, a tattoo artist in New York, said many inaccurate and even illegible Chinese characters can be spotted on Americans. A woman with a tattoo of "baicai" (cabbage) had no idea about the words, Chen said.

Huang, who just moved to New York from a small city in Missouri, said she was scared of a Hispanic man with three Chinese characters "guancai lao" (coffin guy) on his body.

Out of curiosity, Huang asked the man whether he knew the meaning of his tattoo. The pizza delivery man said he just thought the characters are cool and didn't ask his tattoo artist about the meaning.

In other cases, tattoo artists, few of whom know Chinese, wrongly translate their customers' intentions.

For example, a girl who was tattooed with the Chinese character "zai" (disaster) on her body, said her tattoo artist told her it means "beautiful," and a man named James wanted to imprint the word "unbreakable" on his forearm, but instead got four characters "pohuai buke" (destruction forbidden).

Many Americans have to rely on online translations to ascertain the meaning of the characters, which are often inaccurate and awkward.

Tian Tang, who runs a Website dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters in Western culture, posts photos of Chinese character tattoos that either contain errors or carry no meaning. Many netizens share their stories on the site. One of them said his girlfriend had "chou" (ugly) tattooed on her body, which she thought meant "friendship."