Lost in Translation: Tattoos, Meaning and Cultural Misappropriation

Asia is hot. European and American kids learn Mandarin in school. Green tea is the non-alchoholic adult beverage of choice. Chipotle, the popular Mexican restaurant chain, is opening a new concept based on Thai street food. And tattoos derived from Chinese or Japanese characters are appearing on lots of young bodies near you.

The only problem with this last expression of love and respect is that many of the tatts thought to express soulful or deeply personal phrases are utterly meaningless. Why? Because there is frequently no correlation between Asian characters and English or Romance language letters or words. But that has not stopped enterprising tattoo parlors from publishing what experts call 'gibberish fonts' to meet the demand from consumers who like the concept but havent bothered to do the research (not that much is required).

The popularity of Asian scripts (and occasionally, Celtic or Cyrillic) as opposed to others is that they appear romantic, adventurous, mysterious and more meaningful than do the familiar. The irony is that the wearer, if he or she actually ventures to the lands where those languages are spoken, they may find that they have labeled themselves as conspicuously clueless as 'Borat,' the mock Kazakh tourist with the imperfect command of English as played by Sascha Baron Cohen in the infamous movie role.

There is, of course, nothing illegal or necessarily wrong with any of this. But it does suggest that as the world becomes 'smaller,' and we as a global civilization attempt to honor each other by adopting more of our new brethren's cultural cues, that to make the gesture effective, we at least make the effort to get them right. JL

Wendy Christensen comments in The Society Pages blog (hat tip Thierry de Baillon):

It is quite trendy in the U.S. to get a word that means something to you in English (“love,” “strength” etc.) tattooed in Japanese or Chinese characters. Visit any tattoo parlor or online tattoo image gallery and you’ll see many Chinese and Japanese character options.

So why is this so popular? Some argue that the beauty and simplicity of the symbols make Asian characters desirable for tattoos: “But what, besides the beauty of the art, would make these tattoos so popular? The main reason is that Chinese symbolism can be used to express so much, while still remaining simple and clean.” But couldn’t any written language be considered beautiful (cursive English, for instance)? And isn’t any language capable of expressing a lot in just a few simple characters (words have multiple meanings even in English)? I don’t think this is just about beauty and simplicity. Using Japanese or Chinese characters makes a tattoo more exotic than getting the same word tattooed in English. And there is an added element of mystery—having a tattoo that not everyone in an English-speaking country can read is cool (even if the person with the tattoo can’t read it, either).

Cultural appropriation describes the adoption of specific aspects of a culture that is not your own. A Kanji tattoo when the wearer is not Japanese and has no specific connection to Japanese culture is an example of cultural appropriation. While we could debate whether or not cultural appropriation is ever positive (e.g. the popularity of yoga, or the interest in Italian food and culture when HBO’s The Sopranos was running), there are negative consequences to cultural appropriation. When language and symbolism are taken out of their original context, the meaning is over simplified or completely lost. Tattoos that attempt to translate English into Japanese or Chinese characters are a perfect example of lost meaning.

Many tattoos are victims of what Hanzi Smatter calls “gibberish font.” There is no correlation between English letters and Japanese or Chinese characters, but some tattoo shops use this gibberish font for tattoos—using the font to spell out words letter by letter, when Chinese and Japanese don’t work that way.

As is, this gibberish means nothing in Japanese or at least nothing like “live for today” and I don’t think it means anything in Chinese either. The only meaning I can guess is that if it were written 生きて現れる, this would mean “to show up alive” or “turn up alive” as if someone thought dead had appeared alive. Anyway, it sounds pretty spooky, like seeing a zombie!

I think the person who made this up just looked in a dictionary for the word for “to live” 生 and a word that means something like “now” 現and thought you could stick them together to make “live for today.”

The fact that these tattoos, and countless more like them, don’t mean what people think they mean, illustrates the consequences of fetishizing aspects of a culture. Symbols and language don’t translate easily from one culture to another. Adopting aspects of a culture that might seem “exotic” without understanding what they mean in their specific contexts ends up creating cultural gibberish; tattoos that make no sense to anyone at all