Characters in 'Love is a Battlefield'

[tooironic]

Hi guys. I know this is a weird question (and perhaps more suited to a place like hanzismatter, I know), but can anyone work out what the Chinese characters mean on Pat Benetar's shirt in her famous video '

? They appear at about 0:38. From what I can see they read as [...]天羅部 but I have no idea what that could mean. I did a google search but nothing came up... Thanks

[vampire]

This video is not available in your country due to copyright restrictions.

[skylee]

That is 天羅部. I have no idea what it means either.

This link works ->

[AYRYZIGER]

Someone asked me for this trivia the other day.

Before I decided to work on it, I tried to find a solution online but didn't find any.

I noticed that many people have been wondering about this text, including many Chinese and Japanese people and you in this forum. I also noticed that many have said that the text on the shirt is 天羅部 which is a partial yet a very important mistake.

The first character is not 天. It's 矢.

The initial stroke is quite small, but it's clearly visible if one pauses the video at the right split second.

http://www.flickr.co.../in/photostream

Actually there are four characters written on the T-shirt. Not three.

http://www.flickr.co...in/photostream/

目矢羅部

mù shǐ luó bù

It doesn't make much sense in Chinese.

So I wondered if it does in Japanese.

Kanji (as they are called in 日本) have a Chinese-derived reading, and a reading which originated natively in Japan.

They can have more than one reading of each type. Some characters have no reading of a type or another. (But this is another topic. {^|^})

Notice how these characters can be read in Japanese:

目 矢 羅 部

moku shi ra bu

boku ya_____be

me

I immediately noticed that 羅部 could mean "love" since in Japanese, the word "love" is rendered as "rabu" in Katakana: ラブ.

Moreover, 羅 and 部 are often used for their phonetic value only; that is, the meaning of the ideograph doesn't contribute to the meaning of a word. In such cases, it's only the way it sounds that counts.

The Japanese sometimes want to write a word in Kanji characters instead of Kana syllables, for aesthetic or cryptographic reasons.

羅部 = love. Because it sounds like it.

What about the other two characters?

It didn't take much time to realize that 目 stands for "I". After all, 目 means exactly that: "eye".

In English, "eye" and "I" have same the exact sound since they are homophones.

By the way, in Japanese, 目 "eye" and 僕, which is a (rather masculine) word for "I", have the same Chinese derived reading: BOKU ボク

Also, the English word for "eye" and "I" sound like the word for "love" [愛アイai/爱 ài] in both Japanese and Chinese. {^|^}

And what about 矢?

Well, you've probably guessed it right: it stands for "you".

To be exact, it stands for "ya", the more colloquial version of the English pronoun.

Therefore:

目矢羅部

アイ + や + ラ ブ

eye+ya+rabu

I ya love

It seems like it doesn't make much sense if one doesn't know that in Japanese syntax, the verb (or the verbal substitute) is usually put at the end of a sentence:

I（目→僕）はya（矢→君）をlove（羅部→ラブ→愛）してる。← 僕は君を愛してる。

I（目→僕）はya（矢→君）がlove（羅部→ラブ→好き）だ。 ← 僕は君が好きだ。

目矢羅部 = I love ya.

But that's not all. ;-P

Apparently, the t-shirt was made by[?] or for[?] Pat Benatar exclusively for her video.

The title of her song is "Love Is A Battlefield", and what depicts the image of a battlefield more than an arrow 矢 in the eye 目 of a warrior?

http://www.1066onlin...gs/php/sh01.php

So 目矢羅部 also means "Love is a battlefield" or "(A) battlefield (is what) love (is)."

Some also say that "love is in the eye 目 (like an arrow 矢) of the beholder".

The text is therefore a pun mixing Japanese, English and some Chinese.

It could be genius or a huge meaningful confusion.

Whatever the case, it's incredible, and I'm going to print one for myself someday. (On a white t-shirt though.)

Love 羅部 is really a battlefield 目矢, and one has to fight hard for it.

I hope this reply satisfies your curiosity. (Faċli ħafna kienet hux?)

[jrui0826]

Chinese guy here .

I've totally no idea why love is a battlefield translated to 天罗部 。

I believe that's not Chinese.It's Japanese.

love is a battlefild just means "爱是一个战场“ 。 maybe love means 情场 here .