Hi and question

[Nordoff]

Just found this forum after a bit of googling.

Couldn't find a general chat bit so hope no-one minds me saying hello in this bit.

I'm learning mandarin as the company where I work is opening a factory in china (Pudong) and I'm hopeful of a chance to go work their.

Using Pimsleurs audio for the spoken stuff and a book I forget the name of for characters.

I'm just on the simple stuff at the moment but a friend asked me to do a chinese version of something for a tattoo.

He wanted "1 life enjoy it"

I can't see how this would translate directly over and still make sense yet so I had a think and came up with.

"1 life to enjoy life the most"

Which I felt made sense in both languages and was within my limited grasp.

I'm sure someone can point out a better translation or mistake I've made and I'm looking forwards to improving.

Cheers

Gav

[Song You Shen]

I'm not sure as to whether 一生爱生最 translates to the "One life, enjoy it" idiom, but your strokes for 爱 and 最 are incorrect.

Here are the correct strokes:

爱

最

Youshen

[kudra]

for strokes you might check

http://www.usc.edu/dept/ealc/chinese/character/alpha/index.htm

I won't vouch for your translation though..

If your friend must get such a tatoo, you might look at a catalog of 4-character chengyu

before making up something yourself. Try google. Even so, there would be a lot of risk as to appropriateness.

[trevelyan]

Unless you're planning on losing this friend, do not give them tattoo advice. They will only blame you when they inevitably realize that they've stenciled a completely incorehent mess of characters across their body.

Your translation is not at all correct. All it takes is for one native speaker to start laughing at them on the subway, or taking shots for circulation among the mainland Internet population at large before you'll be facing the brunt of a storm and really HAVE to go to Pudong.

Good luck with your Chinese studies.

[Nordoff]

Thank you for the advice.

I'll tell my friend and look into this 4 character chengyu stuff.

I know my translation isn't correct for 1 life enjoy it as I was trying for 1 life to love life the most.

Could you tell me how it came out to someone who would understand it?

[skylee]

Your translation is not OK.

You might wish to consider "enjoy life" ->

享受生命

or "enthusiastic about life"

熱愛生命

I don't support tattooing. But if one must have it done in Chinese, then I would think that it should be done in traditional Chinese.

[gougou]

As Nordoff is using traditional, the 愛 is not that far off. There is a stroke missing in the 生's, though.

[hakkaboy]

Another thing you need to know is that all characters should be drawn to the same size. Your ai4 is much larger than the rest, and yi1 and sheng1 look like they are one character and not two.

[Nordoff]

Thank you for the replies.

I'm not really sure about what is and isn't traditional yet which part the reason why I told my mate to hang on while I did some more research.

(Little knowledge, dangerous thing, etc)

I'll suggest the examples for enjoy life and enthusiastic about life and see what's said.

For the record I'm not into tattoo's either.

But it looks like I found the right forum for all this mandarin stuff.

So expect to hear more daft newbie questions from me in future.

[johnmck]

Getting a tattoo in chinese is risky stuff, as well as translation there is also the issue of font and quaility of writing. If your friend wants to know what he can expect Chinese people to think of his tattoo he should go to this site:

http://www.hanzismatter.com/2005_07_01_archive.html

there he will find an example of a Chinese man with a tattoo in English.

If you want to type Chinese characters into your computer then go to:

http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php

and click on "Type chinese", you type in the pinyin and it prints the characters for you, then you simply cut and paste them.

John

[nipponman]

I knew that there was something different with that ai4 and zui4.

[Quest]

一生爱生最 does not translate into anything, it's a direct word for word translation from English, and it makes no sense at all. 一生 means lifetime, and 生 alone is not a noun and does not mean life. Degree adverbs always come before verbs and adjectives, so 最(most) cannot come after the verb 爱(love).

[shibo77]

It's good that you did the research first!

How about:

人生一逢， 活得痛快！

They are sentence fragments but maybe your friend can have 人生一逢 tattooed on the left limb and 活得痛快 on the right limb?

-Shìbó