I knew a guy from America whose Chinese name at the International School came out on paper as "Peach Power" cuz he said it wrong.

peach power forever

Lovely translations.

I've yet to hear of a Westerner getting a tattoo in Korean,

I want one, and yes, I'll research the meaning.

As for Japanese, well, I think I found a good online dictionary.

I've yet to hear of a Westerner getting a tattoo in Korean,

I want one, and yes, I'll research the meaning.

 

 

As for Japanese, well, I think I found a good online dictionary.

A dictionary isn't everything, though. Some of those people did have dictionaries... but something a dictionary won't give you is idiomatic meanings, figures of speech, cultural connotations, etc.

For example, on the site they had a post on somebody who wanted a a tattoo of "one in a million," and what they got did essentially mean that... but the idiomatic meaning was very negative. I'll give a better explanation since I'm familiar this one, it's a common Chinese expression as well as a being Japanese one (the tattoo itself was in Japanese).

For one thing the cultural equivalent of "a million" is "ten thousand" in Chinese and Japanese (dunno about Korean, not familiar with it). As in, where we might say, "I had about a million things to do yesterday!" in China or Japan it would be "ten thousand," or 万 (Chinese wan4, Japanese man). So they got that right at least. And one is just 一 (Chinese yi1, Japanese ichi).

The problem is, 万一 (wan3yi1) in Chinese and 万が一 (man ga ichi) in Japanese do not mean "unique" or "special" or "fortunate," but rather "in case (something bad happens)" or "what if (something bad happens)." As in the Chinese sentence 我们万一晚了怎么办? If by chance we are late, what will we do? It's an expression of worry, of "what if that one in a million thing will go wrong?"

Your best bet if you really want to have a tattoo in a foreign language? Consult a native speaker. Several native speakers, if you can. And bring them to the tattoo parlor to see examples of the artists' work, so they can confirm that the calligraphy doesn't look like garbage.

You've got very good points there, Lyg.

's A shame I don't have any contact with a native Korean speaker. With Japanese, I can always consult the singer(s) of a Japanese band I'm very familiar with. ^^

Korean characters are phonetic, I believe.

So far as I know, yes it is now, but it didn't used to be. Language reforms reduced Korean to only the phonetic system, but it used to use Chinese characters as well (Hanja). So if you wanted to, say, transliterate your name into Korean, I suppose you can't go wrong there, just like so long as you know what you're doing you can't exactly accidentally say something untoward by transliterating your name into Katakana.

I've thought about getting some sort of Kanji tattoo, but I've always been afraid it wouldn't be the right symbol.