I need help translating symbols on a hat

[M_Monti]

I won a hat during a friend's MMA tournament that has two asian symbols on it. No one could tell me what they mean. I'm not even sure if they're Chinese! (if the upload of this pic doesn't work for some reason, it's the hat you see as my profile pic) Please help me translate this or at least direct me to a site that could help me. Thanks

[OneEye]

空手, karate (or empty-handed, or unarmed)

[M_Monti]

Ah.... well that makes sense... You know, getting it at a MMA fight and all. lol

I just wanted to make sure. I would hate it if the people to got it for the prizes were just cheap and thought "hey who cares about the actual translation. It's cool and Chinese! These drunk college students won't know the difference."

Thanks for the help

[smurese]

Glad you understand now.

I was also going to show you this Japanese image (below) with 空手 (karate) written in the top right hand corner, plus a search for "空手" through Google Images which shows everything you need to know.

Even though karate (空 kara, 手 te) is a Japanese martial art and the two characters are a Japanese word, the characters are also Chinese. As part of their written language, Japanese use some Chinese characters which Japanese call "kanji" ("some" being more than a couple thousand that are ordinarily used - generally fewer than what Chinese usually use).

Good thing you didn't win it at a karate tournament as it would have been embarrassing if they didn't know what it meant (we can excuse the MMA people).