Tattoos are a deeply personal thing for most people, and many put a lot of time into coming up with the perfect design before getting inked. Some people put a bit less thought into things, or get their information from less-than-trustworthy sources, and that can end in an embarrassing disaster.
This is especially true of tattoos that include languages the tattoo-ee doesn't know.
Reddit user u/thejoker0305 asked:
"Chinese speakers/readers of Reddit, what's the dumbest sh*t you've seen tattooed on someone?"
Some of the responses are only a bit cringey, while others are simply absurd.
10.
I knew someone that got the Chinese characters that were supposed to mean "sky".
A Chinese friend of theirs pointed out it meant "ceiling".
Looks like the ceiling's the limit.
9.
A friend of mine wanted an Arabic tattoo that said "Dad", but according to an Arabic-speaking mutual friend, it says "God".
Skydaddy
8.
鸡蛋 meaning egg tattooed on the side of his face - didn't help that the man was bald and it took all my willpower to not laugh in his face
Man that guy really had egg on his face
Bet if he ever finds out he's gonna scramble to get it fixed
I applaud you for not cracking up immediately
7.
A local tattoo shop offered to tattoo 腹泻 on anyone who wanted it, free of charge. It means diarrhea. I've seen it on a few people locally.
People will do dumb things for a free tattoo.
Things as dumb as getting a free tattoo.
6.
Not Chinese but my professor asked a girl why she has "love, friends, and cheese sandwich" tattooed in Arabic. She thought the last one was something like "smiles."
Could be worse! Cheese sandwiches pretty dang good.
Unless you are at fyre.
5.
I know a girl who had "壊疽" ("gangrene") tattooed on her side and it quickly became her nickname ([sic] name-call). Even her family began calling her that. She was a very mean person, simply put, and I can only guess the tattoo artist was getting back at her. This was about five years ago and nobody hears much from her nowadays.
4.
A person from work had a fairly small Japanese tattoo that was supposed to read "Big Brains". (He'd just got his degree or something, so this was a celebration of that)
A Japanese co-workers started laughing and said it was more like "Big Head".
3.
Not Chinese but a friend of mine has coconut chicken noodles tattooed down her spine in Burmese.
She is Burmese.
It's hilarious.
2.
I was in the "motorhead" region of the Metro and saw a dude with Tramp stamp "White Rice". Straight, white and bald biker motorist looking dude.
who said that was an accident
1.
Pornstar Riley Reid has a direct word-for-word translation of "When life gives you lemon, make lemonade" tattooed on her back. It makes zero sense in chinese.
生活帶來您時檸檬做檸檬水
The Chinese is pretty grammatically awkward. It's pretty obvious she got it off Google Translate.
Life brings you time lemon; Make lemon water.
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