Can you translate this? 荘周夢蝶舞空陽光

[Butterfly]

Hello all,

can you give me your translations for this sentence? Or these words?

What do you think?

Thank you very much for your help.

Regards

Butterfly

[skylee]

I think they are too long and complicated for a tattoo. And they are not consistent. The first character is a simplified character, whereas the rest are traditional characters. Bad choice if this is a tattoo.

The first four characters are about a famous story. Take a look -> http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zhuangzi

[chrix]

the characters are consistent, it's probably a Japanese font. (in simplified script, the character would be 庄)

EDIT: here for easy comparison:

traditional script: 莊子

simplified script: 庄子

Japanese: 荘子

Edited January 21, 2010 at 01:03 AM by chrix

[skylee]

I see.

[chrix]

.... but I can't really make sense of 舞空陽光 other than it's about the butterfly dancing around in the sunlight. The only hit google comes up with for this combination is this very thread. So the question for the OP would be what the source is..

[jbradfor]

"Zhuangzi dreaming he is a butterfly dancing in the open (sun)light?"

Makes no sense to me either.

[LongwenChinese]

莊is the traditional Chinese version of 荘. The bottom left part is different.

The second part doesn't make sense to me, either.

[Butterfly]

I have this on my backbone: 荘周夢蝶 "Butterfly dreams" (chinese history)

And I am looking for an extension. I thought maybe this make sense, because I don´t like the normal stuff like: love, friends, family,....

Propably you can help me and give me another suggestion ?

Thanks in advance

[trien27]

What people still don't understand is this: I'm quoting Sammo Hung from "Martial Law", a show which used to be shown in the US:

"Don't wear anything you can't read." Same advice goes for anything in any other languages. Even tattoos!

Well, first off, you already have that etched onto you forever unless you get the incorrectly written 荘 back to 莊, which is in the original Chinese.

莊周夢蝶 = "Doesn't know whether it's 莊周** dreamed that he morphed into a butterfly or whether the butterfly dreamed that it had morphed and became 莊周."* not "Butterfly dreams". 夢蝶 = "Butterfly dreams"? But if you only get a half of it translated, then what about the other half. What happened to the "dreamer", in this case, 莊周 [in the first part]? 蝶 has no real meaning by itself, only when it's combined with other characters does it have a meaning of "butterfly/butterflies". Butterfly/ butterflies = 蝴蝶.

舞空陽光 doesn't make sense:

舞 = to dance

空 = air; space; emptiness = short for "airport" in Japanese Kanji or Korean hanja.

陽光 = sunlight

Source:

*成語詞典/莊周夢蝶

**莊子's personal name was 周, here he's referring to himself. 莊子[369-268 BCE] was a philosopher from the Kingdom of Song during The Warring States period [476-221 BCE]

Edited January 24, 2010 at 05:58 PM by trien27
grammar error

[chrix]

have a look at post #3

[Outofin]

I briefly mentioned the story of the butterfly

here

It's a beautiful story.

[Butterfly]

@Outofin: I like your post about the song I love flowers.

Do you have an idea to extend my tattoo? I am looking for 4 other signs.

I want something, which make sense in combination with my existing one.