Translate please!

[Mara VdB]

I'm lookin for a great tattoo and I have some quote's I really like and I want to see them in chinese characters so I can choose, I hpe you guys can help me seriously cause it's important for me :

1. Don't judge a book by it's cover

2. All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to persue them.

3. a person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new

4. I've been hated by many, wanted by plenty. disliked by some, but confronted by none

5. prepared for the worst but still prayin for the best

place the number before the quote you're gonna translate, otherwise I don't know witch one it is ^^

Thank you very much!

[Michaela]

I can only help you with the first one "别以貌取人,别只看表象" but I for one don't think its a good idea for a tattoo.

[daofeishi]

Before you get characters you don't understand permanently inked on your skin:

• Chinese calligraphy is a very structured art form that is hard even for trained artists. In fact, the majority of tattoo artists will butcher the characters if they have no training in stroke order, calligraphic styles and brush types, and the tattoo will end up looking like a travesty to anyone with some knowledge of Chinese
  
• Chinese is a writing system that means something to a very large group of people. It is not a set of abstract symbols that should be chosen purely based on aesthetic value. A person who gets a Chinese character tattoo that doesn't make it obvious that he/she has put a lot of thought into choosing it could find himself/herself judged by those more knowledgeable.
  
• Chinese is a language with its own literature and set expressions. The phrases above are taken from English and will not translate well into Chinese. For some of them there are phrases with similar meanings in Chinese, but they will come equipped with their own cultural connotations. If any of the phrases above are particularly important to you, you should consider just having them tattooed in English.
  

You are of course free to do whatever you want with your own body, but I hope you have thought these things through. I think a lot of people end up regretting their tattoo if they find out that it somehow is wrong or not conveying what they want. A collection of how wrong things can get if you are not sure about what you are doing can be found here.

Also:

• Strangers on the internet sometimes give really bad advice. If you go with a translated phrase, have it checked by an educated native speaker.
  

[Demonic_Duck]

Bearing in mind what daofeishi said above, I did come across the following expression the other day:

人不可貌相海水不可斗量

It means "you can't judge a person by appearance, just as you can't measure the sea with a pint pot", and corresponds roughly to the meaning of the English phrase "you can't judge a book by its cover".

[shinewind]

1. Don't judge a book by it's cover

勿以貌取人。

2. All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to persue them.

只要你有勇气追寻梦想，它们就能实现。

3. a person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new

一个永远都不会犯错的人，必定墨守成规。

4. I've been hated by many, wanted by plenty. disliked by some, but confronted by none

5. prepared for the worst but still prayin for the best

做好最坏的打算，祈祷最好的结果。

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The 4th one is from lyrics. When translated it no longer make the original sense it carry in the song. I will leave this open to others.

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PS: I agree with #2. Further screen what you get from internet (I believe you will? )

人不可貌相海水不可斗量<BR><BR>

This is also a good one.

[daofeishi]

Is it just me, or do those translations of 2. and 3. sound a bit unnatural? Wouldn't something like

2. 勇者追夢，無一不成

3. 過而能改，善莫大焉

be better?

#2 is an attempt at a Classical Chinese translation in the style of the old philosophers. I'm not an expert in Classical Chinese, so someone else would have to check if the translation is correct. I think moving towards something more classical sounding would be more elegant. It's basically the difference between "now is the winter of our discontent" and "all that crap that ticked us off ain't here no more".

#3 is actually from a named source. It's taken from Zuo Zhuan and means something along the lines of ”the mistakes that we made can change us; what is better than that"

[Peter2010]

I think moving towards something more classical sounding would be more elegant

How about this for 2#?

有志者事竟成，破釜沉舟，百二秦关终属楚；　

苦心人天不负，卧薪尝胆，三千越甲可吞吴。

or

just "有志者事竟成" -- where there is a will there is a way.

In Mao's words, 2# would be "世上无难事，只要肯登攀"

5# reminds me of “尽人事以听天命--Do one's level best and leave the rest to God's will”, but i feel it's a little unrelated

[giraffe]

Some more ideas for tattoos (unfortunately I don't know what the Chinese translations would be):

• "Permanent reminder of what it's like to be young and stupid"
  
• "I think I'm a more interesting person now that I have some letters on my skin that I can't read"
  
• "My friends thought it was a good idea"
  

Actually I think, if you must have a cryptic tattoo, you should get it done in Klingon rather than Chinese. That way, you're less likely to come across a native speaker who thinks you are an idiot. Or if you do meet a native speaker, you have bigger problems than the quality of your epidermal embellishments.

[AYRYZIGER]

I wonder if there are any phrases in Chinese which would be untranslateable in English.

Those surely would make interesting tattoos.

[liuzhou]

I wonder if there are any phrases in Chinese which would be untranslatable in English.

Those surely would make interesting tattoos.

No. They would only demonstrate the stupidity of the person being tattooed with something they couldn't understand.

I won't even get into the linguistic arguments that nothing is untranslatable.

[Demonic_Duck]

No. They would only demonstrate the stupidity of the person being tattooed with something they couldn't understand.

I won't even get into the linguistic arguments that nothing is untranslatable.

Killjoy

Besides, nothing might be untranslatable in principle, but there are certainly things that are very difficult to translate, where a single concept in the original language is quite complicated to explain in the target language.

[hackinger]

Hi,

One first needs a definition of untranslatable, then one can talk about it ...

There is the term "untranslatability", for instance for words which have no equivalent in the target language.

An often cited example ist the Dutch word "Gezelligheid" (or "gezellig") and it is said that in order to understand it you have to understand Dutch culture. Bummer! Apparently, a rough equivalent is the German "Gemütlichkeit" which is also used in English. (German "Geselligkeit" and Dutch "Gezelligheid" apparently have completely different meanings. Oh well.)

Translators have various techniques to deal with "untranslatability" and the method of last resort is a translator's footnote, which is less than ideal for a tattoo.

I am sure that there are quite a few short phrases in Chinese for which at best there is only a very literal short phrase translation possible which does not capture the original meaning very well. (Of course if one expands the translation it explains the original meaning better, but might then be too large and clumsy.)

Cheers

hackinger