Help with translation

[jparker]

I got this for a donation at the recent Asian Festival. It started out as my name but end up something else, i think...

[chrix]

well it looks like it is Japanese. ジェイソン is the standard way of transcribing the English name "Jason" into Japanese, using the katakana syllabary.

慈恵尊　seems to be like an attempt to render it using Chinese characters, which is no longer done in Japanese. But you can see it's Japanese from the second character which would be 惠 in Chinese

In Japanese it would be read jikeison, though the second character could be read as e as well, so ýou would arrive at something like jieson. However, 慈恵 is a word in Japanese read jikei meaning along the lines of "to give with a benevolent heart", so that would be the standard reading. Also, the third character 尊 means "respect, honourable". However, I repeat, rendering foreign names in Chinese characters is no longer done in Japanese, however they like to do this at Asian festivals because they look prettier than the katakana

In Chinese, 慈惠尊 would be read cíhuìzūn.

[jparker]

In all fairness she did try to explain this to me. So I just told her to do whatever she thought was good. I've since framed it to remember my first Asian Festival. Thank you for the response.

[HashiriKata]

慈恵尊　seems to be like an attempt to render it using Chinese characters, which is no longer done in Japanese.

It's still commonly done (for aesthetic purposes), but it must be accompanied by the katakana version to guide the reading, as is done here.

[chrix]

what I meant, of course, is that while they used to write foreign names in kanji like it is still done in Chinese, it is no longer done. It might be done for aesthetic purposes, but the Japanese themselves are quite unsure how do this, so I wouldn't call this very common. (is there any occasion outside of culture fairs where they would even do this?) Because it would be a grave mistake to use the kanji version in a normal context, that's what I was after.