I have a question...

[conuly]

Occasionally, in latin, people show up asking for some translation for a tattoo. Why? Do you really want a cheesy sentiment (most of them are) forever on your body in a dead language you don't even speak? Do you honestly want to spend the rest of your life not only translating your tattoo to everyone but explaining that no, you don't actually speak Latin, some people in a Livejournal community translated it for you? Is it worth the risk that somebody will deliberately tell you something profane/funny just for the laugh (like the Japanese tattoo artist did with stupid white kids who wanted "something cool in Japanese" on their bodies...) I mean, what's the point? Why not just get it in English? That's the language you speak, after all.

Comments

[conuly]

First of all, why wouldn't it be OK to get a common phrase from a language like Latin?

I wasn't talking about that at all. I was talking about making up some phrase like "support gay marriage" or taking a common english phrase such as "you can't have your cake and eat it too" and then trying to translate that into Latin. Not only doesn't that make sense, but it often doesn't work very well.

Obviously, if I want to say something and get away with it, saying it English would be the stupid thing, not saying it a foreign tongue.

You mean "say something I shouldn't be saying"? This also isn't what I'm talking about... that's a perfectly valid reason to get it in another language.

Again, it's *my* body art, and if I think a certain font or language is more visually pleasing than another, then why should I not use whatever I think looks best?

I'm not arguing with your right to do whatever you like to your body, that's not my business. I do, however, think that getting something done that you cannot read is silly. I think we're going to end up disagreeing on that, I certainly don't harass people in the street over this, I just giggle when they post in latin. Also, it can be a bad idea if your translator has a grudge or a bad sense of humor... some people really do have tattoos saying "stupid white kid" and "chinese take-out here" in Japanese because the tattoo artist was pissed.

And it is a cool tattoo. I stand by my belief that if you think Japanese looks cool, you should try to learn it (I want to, but mostly to prove I can, it's a difficult language from english, I've been told).

[literalgirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah. My ex was Japanese (from Japan, not born in the States), and it's a very difficult language. (And I am pretty darn good with languages.)

But on top of the grammatical differences, which are huge, there are other problems with Japanese, including the fact that there are two phonetic alphabets and a ... a... damn. I forgot the word for the picture-based alphabet. Sigh. Anyway, they took the picture-based alphabet from China originally, which is why they have different words/sounds/pronunciations for Kanji, but the pictograms are the same.

So, to be fluent in Japanese you have to not only memorize two phonetic alphabets (hirigana and katakana), but thousands of Kanji as well.

I worked at it during my marriage, but I never developed fluency. And the only alphabet I really learned solid was hiragana.

The only Kanji I know are my son's name, sushi, and mountain! ;-)

(BTW, I think your translator point is well taken. We did the binary ourselves, several times over, and validated the name translations with other sources.)

:-)

[conuly]

Yeah, that's the big concern. You don't want to end up with people who KNOW the language laughing because you really said something you didn't mean, or just made a huge grammatical error.

[literalgirl.livejournal.com]

INDEED!!!!! :-)