What's on my shirt ?? (translation request)

[grasshopper]

Hi,

I have two shirts with chinese characters. I'm wondering what they mean. Can someone help me out ?

Shirt 1, bought in thailand, got it from my mother a while ago.

Shirt 2, just bought it today at a local store.

If you have a link to a page or document with character explanation, it's welcome as well.

Thanks !

[skylee]

The word on the red T-shirt means "new". Its mandarin pronunciation is "xin", which sounds like "shin" in English.

I think the words in the second photo are upside down. If I read them starting from the bottom one, they look like "吉圖案", but that don't seem to make sense to me.

[Yuchi]

is the second one japanese?

[skylee]

Not Japanese (if they are, they are still kanji). They look upside down ...

[Guest jizhu3]

新 means "new"

吉 means "lucky"

图案 means "pattern or picture"

[JoH]

The upside down one says: ji2 tu2 an4 - 'lucky', plus 'pattern' or 'design'. Maybe it is the name of the clothing company - Lucky Design???

[grasshopper]

Hmm, that's probably why the second shirt was quite cheap, because it's upside down ;)

The company which sells these shirts is called 'Zeeman' which is the dutch word for sailor. It's a company which sells cheap clothes and household goodies.

I will go back to the store fore some other goods and check if the other shirts are the same, i'm not expecting them to be able to give some explanation on this.

The company probably thought no one would find out it's printed wrong since we are not familiar with the characters, so it's easy too fool us europeans..

Funny to have a wrong spelled shirt but in the end it still looks like chinese to me Probably the guy who printed them also didn't know the characters .

Thanks for translating!

[nnt]

吉祥圖案運用人物、走獸、花鳥、器物等形象和一些吉祥文字，以民間諺語、吉語及神話故事為題材，透過借喻、比擬、雙關、象徵及諧音等表現手法，構成“一句吉語一圖案”的美術形式，賦予求吉呈祥、消災免難之意，寄託人們對幸福、長壽、喜慶等願望

http://big5.xinhuanet.com/gate/big5/www.sd.xinhuanet.com/news/2004-04/14/content_1972294.htm

Just "magic words" to bring you luck (too bad it's upside down, so ... Maybe the seller was superstitious too Very chinese, still...)

[grasshopper]

So...all the other shirts in the shop are exacly the same

So i'm the owner of an exclusive shirt since i never saw text printed upside down on shirts. Reading good luck signs while visiting the jon!

[hparade]

i like the red one with white font, i think it may look great on people with whiter skin, no, i don't know fashion.

[Lu]

I don't like Zeeman, but a shirt with the characters upside down is so totally wrong that I'd almost consider buying it!

[grasshopper]

Don't like Zeeman much either, besides socks and t-shirts i'm not buying much there. Since i needed two white t-shirts for training i went to the newly opened store close to work.

That's how i got there and found out about the other shirts, probably it was some leftover stock.

[shandongcn]

Hmm, that's probably why the second shirt was quite cheap, because it's upside down ;)

The characters are upside down,yes,that is true.but ,maybe the designer

did it on purpose.

In my opinion,"upside down"means 倒了(dao4 le)，which have the same Pinyin with the phrase"到了"(dao4 le).And "到了" means "something is coming."So,the implicit means" Good luck is coming."