Is this symbol correct?

[porkbus]

I would like to know if the attached image is a correct translation of "family". My mother is Chinese but she is very against tattoos and she will not give me a straight answer. Any help is much appreciated. Thank you!

[edelweis]

Apparently 家眷 only means one's dependents. Unless you have a job which feeds your family, you don't have a 家眷.

 

How about learning Chinese?

It's a long and sometimes tedious endeavor but since your mom is Chinese wouldn't it make sense to honor your heritage this way?

 

(I'm not usually against Chinese tattoos, but in your circumstances merely getting a tattoo seems to me a rather cheap way to show love for your family, especially since your mother is against it.)

[roddy]

Getting a "family" tattoo your mammy hates...  Unwise. 

[Shelley]

Its not a very Chinese thing to do, tattoos are not well thought of in China.

 

If you are feeling rebellious dye your hair pink or blue, it will eventually wash out and you will be able to get on with your life after your rebellious phase.

 

Really, don't do it.

[abcdefg]

家 alone would be better. Perhaps 家庭 would be even a little more precise, but it's a lot more strokes of the pen. 家眷 would be awkward and strange. 

 

The main character involved, 家，is fairly difficult to write well even with pen on paper. The odds are quite high that the tattoo artist will botch it and you will wind up with a mess. 

 

[porkbus]

Apologies for not enough clarification. This is a tattoo meant to represent my family, my wife and children. I only mentioned my mother as she is the closest chinese speaker to me, I don't really care about her feelings on tattoos, that conversation has run it's course over many many years. And while I understand that many others have less than positive feelings towards tattoos, I was mainly coming here hoping for some constructive help.

 

What I was hoping the characters I posted meant was family/home and wife and children respectively. If it means dependents that is close to what I was going for. Does the second character have meaning on it's own?

[abcdefg]

21 hours ago, porkbus said:

What I was hoping the characters I posted meant was family/home and wife and children respectively. If it means dependents that is close to what I was going for.

 

I'm not a native speaker, but to my ear the two words you are asking about seem awkward and strange as a way to say what you are trying to say. It's "dictionary Chinese," not something a Chinese person would say or write in that context (or chose for a tattoo to express the concept you seek.)  

 

Here are some sample sentences using the words you are asking about (jia juan 家眷)。

 

I will write today and recommend you. And say that you have a family of two.   我今天就写信举荐你去，说明你有两个家眷   If there was a way to have my family with me, I'd spend my life here. 假若有办法把家眷带来，我宁可在这里过一辈子。   Had it not been for his family, He'd have gone away long ago.  要是没有家眷拖累,他早就远走高飞了。   He went back by train to Shanghai, and his family came on by car. 他乘火车回上海，然后他的家眷坐汽车走。   These are from Jukuu -- go to this page to read more examples: http://www.jukuu.com/search.php?q=家眷    Quote And while I understand that many others have less than positive feelings towards tattoos, I was mainly coming here hoping for some constructive help.   And for whatever it's worth, I don't care at all whether or not you get an inappropriate tattoo. I am doing my best to give you constructive help without any judgment or social criticism.

[Lu]

家眷 is the word in more boring, official occasions: your job is sending you abroad and needs to take your 家眷 into account. You're paying taxes and get a discount because of your 家眷. I would not get this as a tattoo. 家 is a better choice, it means 'family' in the broader, emotional sense of the word.

 

But do reconsider getting a tattoo in a language you don't understand. Even if you get the correct character, there is still a big chance the tattoo artist will mess it up if they don't know Chinese, or it will just end up a bit wonky, or in a font that is not suitable, or with an accidental extra stroke... So much can go wrong, you won't be able to correct the artist in the moment, and this will be on your body forever.

 

Chinese characters are not some magical set of symbols infused with deeper meaning, they are just a written language like any other written language. Consider getting the word 'family' in your own language, in a font you like. Then you (and your family) can actually read it.

[VocabSplitter]

家眷 is rarely used in both daily conversations and official documents in  Chinese. Also, it doesn’t trigger people’s feelings of the ´bond’ between you and your family.  To me, 家眷 is just a ‘cold’ word which happens to be translated to ‘family’ in English. However, when we say family in English, it can trigger people’s positive emotions related to family.  家眷 cannot trigger that kind of emotion. But it can possibly trigger a little negative emotion like ‘burden’, ‘have to feed them’ and etc.

 

So if you are determined to get a tattoo, I would suggest to find a better word than 家眷.

[porkbus]

Thank you for the constructive comments, they are much appreciated. I will choose something else given the input.

 

A little insight to tattooing a Chinese character for me personally, maybe not for all, but just my own take on it. I realize Chinese characters are not magical symbols with infused mystical meaning, but to an English speaker they are very interesting visually. A tattoo in my opinion is a visual design in the tattoo itself and also in its placement on the body. A graphic art. Much like typography can become graphic design when taken out of context. So the reason why I would not lean towards getting "family" in English is that it would be the literal version of the tattoo. Yes Chinese characters are just a written language but it is not a written language that uses the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Chinese characters, in my opinion appear much more graphic, pictorial. As opposed to letters combined phonetically. Again my opinion, as an English speaker, a Chinese character can be seen as a design that has meaning.

 

If I were living in China, this would probably be a literal tattoo, but the combination of geography and language play a role. A Chinese character that is not immediately read by all in my country becomes less literal but still carries meaning. I'm probably repeating myself, but just wanted to give insight on my feelings and wants towards Chinese characters and tattoos. Probably like many others, I specifically don't want a tattoo in my own language.

 

I doubt anyone actual cares about my wall of text, but this whole conversation has me thinking about why it makes sense to me.

 

Just for my own curiosity, since we've taken it this far and I've been given some fantastic and clear definitions. Does the second character have any meaning on it's own?

 

Thank you all for taking the time to help me, even if you see it as foolish

 

[Tomsima]

a fairly well-put argument i feel. 眷 just means 'dependents' in this context. just remember, youre doing the equivalent of trying to persuade this community that getting "FAMILY + DEPENDENTS" tattooed on you is a good idea. why not just go for something thats a dead language like babylonian, theres some amazing scope there for a cool looking tattoo down that route maybe....

[Lu]

On 2/19/2019 at 9:12 AM, porkbus said:

I doubt anyone actual cares about my wall of text, but this whole conversation has me thinking about why it makes sense to me.

I do care, and even though you have not changed my advice for the next person who comes here, I'm glad to read that you have clearly given it thought and know what you are doing. If you can, try and find a tattoo artists who knows Chinese (or Japanese), to minimise the odds of mistakes or ugliness.

[Shelley]

I also read the "wall of text" and although it hasn't changed my principles about tattooing, as Lu says it shows you have thought about it. Also as Lu says try and find a tattoo artist that knows about characters, also please don't use the font in your OP. Use traditional and find a nice font, if the tattoo artist knows what he is doing he may well have some good suggestions.

 

[roddy]

I can see the attraction. I think if I was going to go this route personally, I'd look at an image of a childhood home, or flower that grew in the garden (would be a nettle or thistle, for me), something like that. Still symbolic, but more directly so, if you see what I mean.

[abcdefg]

Given the meaning this has for you, I'd say go for it. Go ahead and get the tattoo. It's clear you have thought it over carefully. 

 

As others have said, find a skilled tattoo artist, one who either is Chinese or knows how to write Chinese properly. If the place you live or a nearby large city has a "Chinatown" that might be the place to find the sort of tattoo artist you need for this project. You are less likely to wind up with something that elicits groans afterwards. 

 

Have you thought about 家人 instead of your original 家眷? It has a similar but more familiar meaning. It's more about people, and less formal/statistical language. Whereas 家眷 is the language of a census bureau or statistical survey, 家人 is something that would more likely be said by one's family or friends. Closer in feeling to "family members." 

 

You can read through some example sentences here and see if it might be what you had in mind: (they are translated into English)

http://www.jukuu.com/search.php?q=家人

 

 

 

[Alex_Hart]

I don't have anything to add to the character choice, but I appreciate that you came back to respond to people -  I think most people would just disappear from the forums after being told not to get a tattoo by a group of strangers. ? 

 

I second the comments about finding a tattoo artist familiar with Chinese characters. I've met a fairly large number of foreigners with Chinese tattoos while studying in China and quite a few had mistakes. Some of them were easily fixed (Russian classmate changed his 刀 into a 力), but some were impossible to fix. 

On 2/17/2019 at 11:07 PM, Shelley said:

Its not a very Chinese thing to do, tattoos are not well thought of in China.

 

This is changing fairly quickly. Tattoos are now pretty common among young people in big cities like Hangzhou and Shanghai and don't earn anyone a second look as far as I can tell.

 

It is true that the government doesn't approve and has even banned tattoos from TV at times, but I don't think this reflects Chinese society. The government seems to enjoy its efforts to enforce "morality", but these usually go ignored among people who aren't party members.

[porkbus]

Wow. Thank you all of you. I really really appreciate the insight and helping me understand just exactly what I was asking. Thank you for that clarity and I'm definitely taking all of this great advice into consideration and by no means rushing. And thank you for hearing my side of things. Everything said makes sense and has definitely helped me

 

Something about tattoos these days is that many artists use stencils, and I was considering a very computer/typeface font for my tattoo. As opposed to a traditional brush stroke look. So using the advice above, I will make sure to get my characters right. Run them by this crowd if possible ? and then pass the design directly to the right tattoo artist to use as a direct stencil so that there is no room for error or interpretation.

 

You all rock!

[Lu]

1 hour ago, porkbus said:

I was considering a very computer/typeface font for my tattoo. As opposed to a traditional brush stroke look.

I'd ask you once again to reconsider :-) Of course, it's a matter of taste, but generally the brush stroke look is considered more beautiful. Also more personal, more human, in my opinion, which makes it a better choice for a tattoo that says 'family'. For something more business-like or computer-related or whatever the typeface look is more suitable. Again, purely a matter of taste, but brush calligraphy just looks better.

[Shelley]

4 hours ago, porkbus said:

I was considering a very computer/typeface font for my tattoo

 

Please reconsider, this will not look very nice. As Lu says brush stroke is much more beautiful, you can just as easily create a stencil using brush stroke and it will be worth it. 

 

I can't recall ever seeing someone with a tattoo in a Latin script using a typewriter font. its always a beautiful calligraphy font.

 

Just think about it, it will be with you forever.

 

To be honest, to my eye that is just plain ugly for a tattoo. There are so many beautiful alternatives to choose from. Just have a look around and see what you think. 

 

P.S. Here are some to give you an idea of the possibility https://www.freechinesefont.com/

[roddy]

 

5 hours ago, porkbus said:

I was considering a very computer/typeface font for my tattoo.

You wouldn't be the first. Second page for the photo. I actually had to mine that photo off the Internet and put it back in, as the image hosting service the OP had used has closed down, but it's the same one. I remember that first "what the hell has he done?" look very clearly.