Bro's tattoo

[Archronos]

My bro recently got back from the army with a new tattoo consisting of several Chinese characters on his forearm. He's teasing the hell outta me by not telling me what do they mean.

Fortunately, i took a sneak photo of it once when i was at his base and would very much appreciate if you guys could translate it for me.

Here's a link of the pic

http://www.mypicx.com/12202010/Tatt/

P.S - simply click on the picture for it to be shown in it's entirety.

Thx in advance.

[James Johnston]

I think these are the characters, though they're not written very well: 太熱虑陽

They don't mean anything particularly meaningful. "Too hot consider male" would be a translation that he might like.

[anonymoose]

The first character is written backwards! It looks rubbish, to be honest.

[jbradfor]

The third character might be 虎 (tiger). [since the second character is clearly traditional, I'd be surprised if the third is simplified. But with tattoos, who knows?]

[adrianlondon]

The first character is backwards.

I got a t-shirt printed with "与众不同" on it, with each character (deliberately) written backwards. Whenever anyone asks why, or more likely laughs at me and tells me that my characters are backwards (assuming I've no idea) I just respond with the chengyu. No one really gets it, but I find it very amusing.

[yonglin]

Hmm... if he stands up with his arm hanging down on his side, the characters will be upside down...

[ma3zi1]

To answer the poster's question:

太 tai4 ＝ too (much), highest, greatest, very, extremely

熱 re4 ＝ hot (of weather), to warm up

虎 hu3 ＝ tiger (the animal)

陽 yang2 ＝ the sun, (the "yang" from "yin & yang" signifying males)

There is nothing grammatically of interest about the tattoo, it's just a string of random characters with meanings that your brother probably liked. Also the characters are written poorly, essentially like a child wrote them, but at least they are readable.

There are simplified versions of the characters 熱|热 and 陽|阳 (the right-hand version is simplified in each pair). However, it appears that your brother chose to go with the traditional versions of the characters.

[kellys]

太 tài (too much; extremely)

热 rè (hot)

maybe is 虎 tiger，but it has a little mistake, one line was missing

阳 yáng (sun)

haha, i don't get it why ur brother put these four characters together. it seems no meaning at all. frankly speaking, the characters looks so ugly.

[imron]

He's teasing the hell outta me by not telling me what do they mean.

And now you'll be able to tease the hell out of him by telling him what it really means.

At least he didn't get something like Courage and Compassion.

[Archronos]

Haha, after i told him he messed up on the tattoo, he still didn't believe me. So we went to a tattoo studio where there happened to be an artist from China that basically told us what you guys did. Then, after my brother got embarrassed he finally admitted he wanted the symbols to mean "too hot to trot". Haha, that dumbass, just like him to go in head-first and not do any research about the subject beforehand. And that thing is permanent! Hah!

Thanks a lot, guys. I couldn't have done it without your kind help. I know it's a petty thing to ask of you to help me with, but it's been bugging me for months now, and you really came through for me. Cheers!

[ma3zi1]

Well, at least the story has a happy ending. Sibling rivalry is quite magical in its pettiness.

For the record:

"Too hot to trot" = 太帥而不能走路

(in a literal sense)

I must say, it doesn't have quite the linguistic punch in Chinese though.

Although, what your brother might've wanted was:

花花公子 = "playboy"

[jbradfor]

maybe is 虎 tiger，but it has a little mistake, one line was missing

Which line is missing? According to the Taiwan MOE, the correct form does have 八 on the bottom, not 几. I do not know the Hong Kong standard. Since the rest of the characters are traditional, it seems correct to me use this form.

[ma3zi1]

Which line is missing? According to the Taiwan MOE, the correct form does have 八 on the bottom, not 几.

I have personally always been confused about that difference in terms whether they are considered variants (異體), or if they are regarded in terms of the 簡體/繁體 dichotomy.

I've also seen it in the following characters: 遞, 唬, and 號

(Obviously not in the simplified versions 递 & 号 though)

Check this out: http://dict.variants.moe.edu.tw/yitia/lda/lda03604.htm