Can someone please translate my tattoo

[jaelynn]

A few years ago I got a tattoo. Well the chart that I chose the tat from said it was translating these symbols from american letters (ex. A,B,C) directly to Chinese symbols. I didn't know at that time that Chinese symbols do not work that way. I THOUGHT that I was getting my new born son's name tatooed on my back. Come to find out, I was sadly mislead. I was pretty distraught.

To this day I do not know what the tattoo says. I do have a pic. So if anyone out there can translate Chinese symbols to English please, please help me. I would atleast like to know what it means before I attempt to cover it up.

Thanks so much!!

[huisheng]

Hi, I want to help out, but the picture is too fuzzy.

[jaelynn]

I hope this works better. I tried to edit it so its more clear.

[skylee]

I think the tattoo is gibberish. While some look like chinese characters, like -

天

流

文

近

空

戈

功

- together they are not meaningful, and very unlikely to have anything to do with your son's name.

[keenstone]

I'd like to try:

天 tian(1) - sky

流 liu (2) - n.stream or v. flow

文 wen (2) - literature

近 jin (4) - close to, near

空 kong (1) - empty

弋 yi (4) - cruise

功 gong (1) - achievement

But it make no sense with joint them together! I'm confused.

[Lu]

Hanzismatter found the so-called "Chinese alphabet" once and published it on that site. Try finding it there (whenever I go to that site, I always get a blank page, so can't look for it).

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a Chinese alphabet, so the tattoo you got doesn't mean anything in Chinese.

[imron]

Here's the link.

And putting it together, we have:

夫 － F

流 － r

女 － a

道 － n

空 － k

戈 － i

功 － e

Except that there is no such thing as an alphabet in Chinese so it doesn't really mean Frankie, it's just a bunch of random characters. I'm sorry to have to say, but it is also very poorly written, and the characters barely look how they are supposed to.

[jaelynn]

Thank you everyone for your help.

I assumed that in chinese it would be a bunch of jibberish. I was just curious as to what each word meant. I did not want anyone seeing my tatoo and it end up being bad words or foul language.

Yes, my son's name is Frankie. That is what I was thinking it was supposed to say when I got it. I am thinking of getting it covered up. When I found out that it doesn't work like that I was sad because it was supposed to be something meaningful that I would have forever to be a representation of the love I have for my son.

Again, thank you so much for all your help.

HUGS!!

[huisheng]

In Chinese, Frankie normally translates to

[jaelynn]

huisheng:

Thank you so much for this! This is wonderful!!!!!

[imron]

Please also read these threads on why you can't really "translate" an English name into Chinese:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/10886-chinese-characters-for-names

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/12372-name-translation

[jaelynn]

Thank you imron. I really appreciate your help. I have decided that I am not going to try to get his name on me. But more of a symbol of my feelings for him or what he means to me. He is my only child and he is all I will ever be able to have and I want this representation to be accurate and something I can be proud to have.

I have been told by a friend of mine that was trying to comfort me about this issue that the collection of symbols that I have might have some meaning after all.

For example:

天 tian(1) - sky = He is the air I breathe

流 liu (2) - n.stream or v. flow = My love and devotion is a never ending 'flow'.

文 wen (2) - literature = Not even the beauty of words can describe what he means to me.

近 jin (4) - close to, near = He will always be close to my heart

空 kong (1) - empty = I would be empty without him

弋 yi (4) - cruise = I really dont know about what this could mean..

功 gong (1) - achievement = I find it a great achievement that I was able to concieve him and help him to grow as a infant into a young man.

Does that make sense?

I thought of having some sort of design to seperate the characters so that they are viewed as seperate words and not as a sentence, where it would appear to be jibberish.

Then that way even if other people aren't able to understand, its what it means to me in my heart.

[huisheng]

Hi, it's perfectly fine the way these characters are interpreted.

My dictionary says 戈 actually means dagger.

[jaelynn]

I can't see the symbol you typed. Can you write the name of it or add an image of it?

Thank you

[huisheng]

Don't know why you can't see it. It's the second character from the bottom you tattoo, supposedly representing letter "i".

[imron]

You can't see it probably because you don't have Chinese fonts installed on your computer. (see here for how to do this) Actually, the characters you used were the ones Keenstone listed initially, some of which are slightly different from the one listed in the asian font that you got tattooed. The ones that correspond to your tattoo are:

夫 － fū - Husband/man

流 － liú - n.stream or v. flow

女 － nǚ - Woman

道 － dào - Road/path/way. (this is also the character for 'Tao')

空 － kōng - empty

戈 － gē - weapon used dagger/axe

功 － gōng - achievement

However as I mentioned earlier, the characters aren't very well drawn, hence the reason it was easy to confuse them for something else.

[heifeng]

戈 : just interpret it to your wish for him to be strong just the the materials used to construct a dagger/ax, etc. although the characters are hard to read they just remind me of jia gu wen/tortoise script since they are so jagged....so hey, after some creativity, not so bad, right? still full of meaning for you and that's the main point anyway:wink:

[Ruru786]

Hey, I also really need someone to translate this Chinese tattoo to English, that would be great thank you!

 

[Lu]

氵 shuǐ water radical

夭 yāo to die young

西 xī west

Or, if the radical is actually supposed to go with the second character:

沃 wò fertile; to irrigate (according to my dictionary)

西 xī west

I have no idea what to make of this. What was it supposed to mean?

[Abhishek nanda]

Can anyone translate this tattoo please