Thread: REFINED STEET OR STEEL WITH AN UP SIDE DOWN L

Monday morning after a rough weekend.

Or like the Kanayama strop stamp, that is miss spelled Kanoyama, they used it for years before someone told them about the mis spelling, they did not read English. They just shrugged, and continued using it.

There is a part in a Tony Hillerman, Joe Leaphorn book where Jim Chee and his friends are watching an old Western at a drive-in, the Cavalry and some big wigs are having a face to face with the waring Apache’s, the Chief walks up to the General and says something very serious, supposedly in Apache, and everybody watching the movie starts laughing hysterically.

The Army scout translates, “He said, the chief is Honored to meet with the General and the Secretary”, or some such drivel and everyone laughs again.

Chee’s girlfriend who is Navajo but does not speak Navajo, asks, “What was so funny?”

Chee says, Hollywood hired a bunch of Navajos to play the Apaches in the movie. When he walked up to the General, he tells the General, “Everybody says you have a very small pecker”.

The Hillerman series is a great read, at one time AAA had an “Indian Country” map of the 4 Corners, with a bunch of the spots marked that were depicted in Tony’s books. A lot of good history in those fiction books, he was a great storyteller.

Love those books!

Originally Posted by PaulFLUS

My son was telling me about the Chinese tattoos. Apparently people here in the US like to get Chinese characters at shops in Chinatown and commonly are tattooed with derogatory words

There are many Martial Artists walking around with Kanji Tattoos that say things like "Stupid White Boy Thinks He's Bruce Lee"

It looks to me like a legit misspelling.

They happened from time to time.

The poor forger probably didn’t have any whiteout for his tang typewriter!

Originally Posted by PaulFLUS

My son was telling me about the Chinese tattoos. Apparently people here in the US like to get Chinese characters at shops in Chinatown and commonly are tattooed with derogatory words

My Chinese is reasonable. I lived in China for 11 years, and currently work as a Chinese - English translator. I have heard this story many, many, many times and have yet to see an example.

Originally Posted by Montgomery

My Chinese is reasonable. I lived in China for 11 years, and currently work as a Chinese - English translator. I have heard this story many, many, many times and have yet to see an example.

I haven't seen it either but then I don't speak Chinese. Perhaps that's an isolated event which got told and re-told and made out to sound more frequent than it is. One thing I have heard from a reliable source is that people in non-English speaking countries, I think primarily Japan and Korea were ones mentioned, love to wear shirts with English phrases on them and sometimes the phrases make absolutely no sense. And if they do make sense they are somewhat random in nature like "potato" (just our of the blue as an example)

I have a friend that stopped translating tattoos or even reading them if not asked.

He did not find any examples of swear words but said that the owner of the tattoo many times thought it meant something different than what he translated.