Dumb Mistranslated Tattoos and Shirts that People Witnessed

Author image for Eric Lund
Eric Lund
Nov 23, 2019 8:00 PM EST

In this wide world, we see a lot of hilarious translations and translation fails. Languages are complex and hard to understand completely. These frustratingly interesting observations on language and silly literal translations are a good example of that. This can come to a head when overzealous tourists try to get a tattoo in not only a language they don't understand, but in characters that are also completely foreign to them. Case in point, you don't want to misstep and end up as the "goldfish man"

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  • 01
    Text - Olokojamkong 19.9k points 1 day ago I once saw this middle aged dude wearing " on his shoulder (the rough literary translation is "Goldfish Man"), which in cantonese means a sleazy older man who creeps on younger girls/children. Basically a pedo. Wonder under what circumstances he got that inked...
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  • 02
    Text - GMBoxer 15.0k points 1 day ago I saw somebody who probably doesnt understand japanese flexing with his japanese tattoo. It is translated to english, surprise surprise, a giant failure.
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  • 03
    Text - whereegosdare84 14.8k points 1 day ago Not my story but a friend of mine. She had a classmate in college with a kanji tattoo, confused she asked her what it meant. "High princess" Turns out it actually said "pig princess"
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  • 04
    Text - feverishdodo 12.4k points 1 day ago Award from Redd R... his fist. I haven't taken Chinese but in Japanese it means 'desk'.
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  • 05
    Text - Eleven_Shelves 11.9k points 1 day ago In high school a lot of people would ask me to write on them in Chinese in pen, I'd always write " which means "I don't speak Chinese"
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  • 06
    Text - nyaaaarp 9.7k points 1 day ago I was on the subway in NYC and there was a guy who clearly lifted a lot. He was wearing a sleeveless shirt and on his jacked arms in chinese were the words " or "Beef noodle soup" for everyone to see. Man looked ready to get the rest of his favorite restaurant's menu tattooed on his body.
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  • 07
    Text - Lmaooozedong 6.9k points 1 day ago 40+ year old bald white guy with Chinese characters that translated as "Tm a cute little princess" on the length of his forearm. Had a good laugh the rest of that day.
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  • 08
    Text - notonrexmanningday 6.6k points 1 day ago Sort of opposite of this. In 1987 my sister visited the USSR and came home with a photo of an old lady wearing t-shirt that said "FUCK YOU I'M FROM MINNESOTA"
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  • 09
    Text - Shaun32887 5.5k points 1 day ago I have a kind of reverse of this, I am an American who visited South Korea and saw a shirt there. This was in a part of the country where not a lot of English was spoken; we had some difficulty getting around. I was walking by a clothing store that seemed to sell nice, somewhat classy but not dressy clothes. Think stuff you can wear to a job where you interact with the public. Then, right there in the window, was a shirt that had written across the front,
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  • 10
    Text - Halzbog 4.5k points 1 day ago I met a guy in the air port when I came back from living in Tokyo for 2 years who had just visited Japan. He had 2 symbols on his shoulder I noticed that were "off". I stopped him and asked him what his tattoo said. He said " It means strong will bro." I didn't have the heart to tell him..... his two symbols he picked in order were "dog poop". If you find this online.... im truly sorry bro. Ha ha.
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  • 11
    Text - TimandJoshBricks 4.2k points 1 day ago I met a girl who showed me her tattoo saying it said "love". Sadly it said "weird". Similar Kanji, so wel.. (love:orweird
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  • 12
    Text - Tanucks 3.7k points 1 day ago I remember in elementary school my buddy had this really cool hoodie with Asian lettering and dragons n shit, anyway one day our sub tells him the only thing written on it was "chicken wing" he also told him there were multiple different languages on it all used incorrectly
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  • 13
    Text - HuffMyJock 3.2k points 1 day ago Saw a girl with tattooed on her shoulder who swore up and down it meant poison... It means fish JackShetland 2.7k points 1 day ago My theory is that poor spelling was involved, because "poison" is one letter away from "poisson", which is French for fish. So, maybe she typed "poisson" into Google translate, it auto detected French and gave her the word for "fish". cara27hhh 4.3k points 1 day ago Imao so she's dumb in 3 languages
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  • 14
    Text - foxnfawn 2.7k points 1 day ago A guy came up to my Mom and I and asked what character he had tattooed on his ankle. It was the word for fire in Chinese with an extra mark. When we told him there was a typo in the character, he said he knew it was fire but he added the extra line to make it look cooler. Belarusssr 595 points 1 day ago was it ? foxnfawn 866 points 1 day ago No it was but he added an extra dot/line in the "empty" space under the
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  • 15
    Text - oikorapunk 2.4k points 1 day ago "Kitchen" - confused the kanji, what he wanted Ihave idea. "Fat man"- he wanted "big guy" (tough guy?) apparently.
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  • 16
    Text - MrNightKnight 1.6k points 1 day ago I used to live in China and it was considered fashionable' to have English lettering on your clothing regardless if you spoke English or not. I once saw an old woman literally in her 80s-90s with "drugs are my life" on her T-shirt. I guess at that age she's probably not wrong, but still.
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  • 17
    Text - cmilkrun 1.6k points 1 day ago Chinese speaker here. In high school I worked at a CVS. A white woman showed up at the register with a very poorly drawn tattoo, and I said "cool tattoo, means power". She scoffed and replied to me like I was satan himself, and said "you obviously don't understand Chinese "letters" the tattoo artist told me it means the strength to overcome anything, even breast cance..." then she rolled her eyes at me and walked away.
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  • 18
    Text - Bangbangsmashsmash 1.1k points 1 day ago I didn't see it, but I went with a friend to get a piercing, and I heard a guy say, I don't like the way that looks, can you change this line and make the ends do this. The tattoo artist said, "Yea, but that changes the word, you might be going from brave to gay woman for all I know. You can't change kanji symbols and still have it mean the same thing."
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  • 19
    Text - SupremeOverlordBacon 1.0k points 1 day ago Not Japanese or Chinese, but I once saw "Ass glove" tattooed on someone's chest in German. They said it meant "Peace for all"
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  • 20
    Text - nomadnoir 843 points 1 day ago For me it was something someone claimed was "chinese writing" but barely resembled any Chinese characters. It just looked like some squiggles. They thought it was lovebut it definitely wasn't.
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  • 21
    Text - MShades 725 points 1 day ago S I once had a roommate placed with me in the apartment our company ran for us here in Japan. He was loud, obnoxious, and I generally didn't get on well with him. But, you try to get along, so we'd go to the izakaya up the street from time to time with other friends to drink and have a good time. The owners were this wonderful old Japanese couple who loved having all these weird gaijin come and entertain the locals. Anyway, somehow we get talking about tattoos
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  • 22
    Text - paostmo 27.3k points 1 day ago My buddy has "illiterate foreigner" in traditional Chinese characters. It's dope.
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  • 23
    Text - KoGTRB 25.2k points 1 day ago "tiny chicken" my friend got that thinking it said his name
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  • 24
    Text - xopokxo 23.4k points 1 day ago My friend got a tattoo that said "veni vidi vici" in chinese, well so he thought. The tattoo acutally said "three small dishes"
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  • 25
    Text - DerpysealzVI 22.5k points 1 day ago Please dont use google translate to translate tattoos, i once saw "i once am a katana"
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FAIL funny stories translation japanese tourists tattoos language dumb stories stupid chinese
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