Short English-2-Chinese Needed 4 Tat.

[AstroDav]

I stopped by the tattoo place today for another one, with intentions of getting a generic "tribal art" design on my outer bicep, or some type of chain which completely encircled the arm. (I chickened out of that last one because I know from previous personal experience that the inside of the arm HURTS!! ) Yeah, you can call me a wimp, I can handle it.

While I like tats & like looking at others who have large & complex designs, that just isn't me. So for my 3rd & last one, after the "circle" was eliminated, I decided upon just a solid black, somewhat thin, elongated tribal design from right below the point of my shoulder to just above the elbow .... basically covering most of the outside bicep.

I actually had one picked out from the flash, but then learned that the tat-artist was busy for the next 4 hours. I didn't really have time to wait, so put it off for another day. On the way home, I decided that was actually a GOOD thing. Being as this will be my final tat, I'd rather have something that actually MEANS something, rather than just a pretty design.

What I decided upon is a nickname that my unit used during the 13 years I spent in the military. We were "Dogs Of War". Yeah, I know, sounds all gung-ho & stuff, but it's actually from Shakespeare. Even grunts can be a bit civilized & cosmopolitan.

So, could someone please translate "Dogs Of War" (no quotes of course) into Chinese symbols for me? I've already ran it through a couple of automatic translaters on the web, but I don't entirely trust them. And too, the result was so tiny that the artist may have had trouble copying it. I did zoom in all my browser would let me, but it was still only 3/4" or so. So if you could somehow post the symbols as an image, or fairly large font, that would be GREAT. Just look at your own arm & take a guess at how big they should be. Close is close enough. If you can't do it big like this, no worries. I'll just take the translation & enlarge it myself as best that I can.

Last bits of info, in case it helps. I don't really care if it's "Simplified" or "Traditional" .... BOTH would be great. And all of the on-line results gave me 3 symbols, which I assume is 1 for each word. But if necessary, 4 symbols will fit also. And since this will be a vertical type tat, the symbols will be stacked ... "Dogs" at top, "Of" in the middle, & "War" at bottom. Not sure if that makes any difference at all, but just threw it in just in case.

You have my greatest thanks in advance, for helping me in this very important matter. Because obviously, this thing will be on my arm for quite a while.

[jbradfor]

Regarding the font size, just cut and paste what you get into a word processor, set the font size to however big you want it, and click on print.

Regarding your original question, here, "dogs of war" refers to soldiers. A literal translation, something like 狗之戰, would be really weird. [Chinese, who could read it, wouldn't be likely to know the English version and would think it's weird, and probably translate it as "dogs fighting". English speakers, who know the English version, wouldn't get it. Only use select few on Chinese-forums would get it B) And we probably think it's weird.] So are you looking for a Chinese word for soldiers?

[creamyhorror]

"A literal translation, something like 狗之戰" - I think you mixed that up

The game "Dogs of War" is officially 《战狗》 in Chinese ("War Dogs"). I don't know if you want to use that, unless you don't mind having a computer game name on your bicep.

Maybe "战火之犬"? Dogs of the Fires of War?

[jbradfor]

I think you mixed that up

Oh yeah. I actually first typed 戰之夠 :o I only noticed it right before I sent the reply, and I guess I was so flustered I just typed it wrong....

[万里长城]

《犬战》is pretty good!

[AstroDav]

Well, the phrase comes from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar". Antony states, after Caesar's murder, "And Caesar's spirit .... Shall .... Cry Havoc, and let slip the dogs of war". The "dogs of war" he is referring to are literally mercenarys, who are sure to respond to the murder by making war.

I am aware that "mercenary soldiers", or something very similar, will translate into Chinese & produce 2 characters. I was hoping to avoid this & actualy get a 3-character set meaning "Dogs", "Of", & "War" .... since this was only our nickname & professional soldiers don't typically take kindly to being called mercenarys.

But since English won't really translate word-for-word into Chinese sometimes, that 3-character Chinese "sentence" may be impossible to accurately portray. I am fairly knowledgeable in Latin, through my 3 decades of studying the mythology & names of astronomical objects & constellations. This same general thing ... "3 English words only make 2 Latin words, & neither of them is actually the word you started out with" ... happens quite often in English-to-Latin, so I fully understand the complexity of what I am asking.

Perhaps it just can't be done, at least not "legally".

[Glenn]

Doesn't that mean "dog war"?

[creamyhorror]

If you want 3 characters, just do 战之犬 ("Dogs of War", not word-for-word) then.

[AstroDav]

Cool. LOTS of help here, more than any other forum where I posted the same thing to .... a total of 9 places I believe. For that type of interest in my dilemma, I thank you.

I see at least 3 versions here which fit the 3-character phrase which I was hoping to be able to do. So last question, of those 3, how do they "reverse translate", or in other words, what would those 3 English-To-Chinese translations look like if you now took them back to English?

1. Jbradfor = 狗之戰 or 戰之夠 (These are almost mirror-images of each other, but not quite. The 1st & 3d characters appear different. From the conversation above, I'm pretty sure one of them was a mistake. But I'd like to verify which one of them the author meant to be the correct one.)

2. 万里长城 = 犬战 (I'm assuming that DOESN'T mean "pretty good", as in the post. But that the author meant this was a pretty good translation of my phrase.)

3. Creamyhorror = 战之犬

So, which one of those would be the most accurate translation of Chinese-To-English for "Dogs Of War"? I'm in no great hurry, so don't rush. When this last request has happened as good as it can happen, then I'll leave you alone about it & give you my greatest appreciation.

[jbradfor]

Creamyhorror = 战之犬

This is a literal translation of "dogs of war".

Jbradfor = 狗之戰 or 戰之夠

戰 (what I used) and 战 (what Creamyhorror used) are the same character. The former is traditional, the latter is simplified.

狗 (what I used) and 犬 (what Creamyhorror used) are different characters that both mean "dog". I'm not sure which sounds better here.

So 战之犬, 战之狗 , 戰之犬, and 戰之狗 are all basically the same.

"狗之戰" was a brain-fart on my part. I got the order wrong. Ignore that.

"戰之夠" was also a brain-fart. 夠, which actually means "sufficient", is pronounced the same as 狗, and looks very similar, so I picked the wrong one.

which one of those would be the most accurate translation of Chinese-To-English for "Dogs Of War"?

IMHO, none of these are "accurate" in the sense that I would expect that a typical Chinese reading any of these would not understand that you are referring to soldiers. Is that OK with you?

[feihong]

I would prefer 戰之犬 over 戰之狗.

犬 means "dog", but it tends to be used in more formal words. Think of the difference between "dog" and "canine" in English.

Examples of words that use 犬:

猎犬 - hunting dog

警犬 - police dog

犬种 - dog breed

大犬座 - Canis Major

Examples of words that use 狗:

狗肉 - dog meat

狗仔队 - paparazzi

狗屁 - bullshit; nonsense

狗男女 - a couple engaged in an illicit affair

An informal survey of MDBG dictionary results shows that most 犬-containing words have neutral connotations, but many 狗-containing words have a negative connotation.

[creamyhorror]

Pretty much what feihong said. 犬 is probably a better choice than 狗.