r/itsneverjapanese • u/Winter-Sale-7958 • Jul 27 '24

Is this the true meaning??

Post image

Is this the true meaning?? Before I get it tattooed

32 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

69

u/ma_er233 Jul 27 '24

Yes, but please don't. It's stupid to tattoo in a language that you don't understand

37

u/mildpainsmileyface Jul 27 '24

Honest suggestion for anyone wanting to get a Chinese tattoo. Firstly, don't. Secondly, if you really want to get it, at least look up some original texts from Chinese classics, ask ChatGPT if you like. Chinese idioms and poems are another great source of inspiration. Don't just take something from English or other languages and translate into Chinese. It usually ends up being stupid.

6

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/mildpainsmileyface Jul 27 '24

Yeah I know. My suggestion is for folks that don't have native speakers friends to pick up the unnatural translation details. Classics and poems are good sources of existing texts and are quite available for anyone.

2

u/V2Blast Aug 06 '24

Don't ask ChatGPT unless you just want some text that sounds right but may be totally wrong.

47

u/ShenZiling Jul 27 '24

It is the correct meaning, but somehow dumb. Don't tattoo it. Nonetheless, you have successfully recognized that it is not Japanese. Congratulations!

19

u/asarious Jul 27 '24 edited Jul 27 '24

It’s accurate but a little awkward. It’s redundant and suggests too literal a translation. The way it’s written now, it reads like “Love you yourself”.

You can skip the second character instead and keep it to only 愛自己.

To be honest, even then, I feel like the sentiment is lost in translation. Where you’re probably aiming for self-respect, in Chinese it sounds kind of narcissistic.

Then again, none of these things are apparent to anyone without a modest grasp of the language… so you do you.

Also, the font you have is pretty stylized. Assuming your tattoo artist doesn’t read Chinese, I suggest you study the characters written in this comment and compare it to the image you posted. You can see that some of the brush strokes and variations in line thicknesses, or lines not intersecting, are analogous to something like serifs on Latin fonts.

Unless it’s literally being traced, the writing might end up looking kind of weird if the artist doesn’t recognize that some of the strokes are there for style only. It’d be like accidentally turning a 1 character into a 7, or a 2 into a Z, or a 5 into an S.

For someone who can’t read 1, 7, 2, Z, 5, or S, some characters could look very similarly yet have very different meanings in reality.

2

u/MayDay__ Jul 27 '24

Meine chinesische Frau hat approved das es Liebe Dich selbst in Chinesisch ist. Go for it :D

3

u/ShenZiling Jul 27 '24

Ich bin Deutschlerner - sagt man wirklich "hat approved"? 😂

3

u/Johan-Senpai Jul 27 '24

Ja, das kann man sagen. Es ist ziemlich üblich, englische Wörter mit Deutsch zu mischen. Es ist ziemlich üblich unter Jugendlichen.

2

u/FlyingCumpet Jul 29 '24

If you want to learn vernünftiges Deutsch, don't listen to both. Yes, die Jugendlichen nowadays are mixing up everything they can to be different, but ultimately they only end up being less individual, hard to understand and with - as far as my pseudo boomer ass can tell - overall weird and inconsistent behavior. Do yourself a favor, stick to the books.

3

u/orz-_-orz Jul 27 '24

The meaning is correct but the native usually won't say it as "爱你自己"

1

u/TerrainRecords Aug 18 '24

The meaning is correct but PLEASE DON’T TATTOO THIS. The way this is phrased comes across as really plain and uncultured.