Chinglish...

Chinese to English and English to Chinese translations can end up into weird meanings. Chinese language has many characters and each and every character has a meaning. There are more than 7000 characters and its quite a complex language.

Normally, Chinese people will have a name with 3 characters, one for the family name and the other two, the given name. But, when foreigners are given Chinese names, it is normally given based on sounds, choosing some characters that sound like your real name. For example, my name Sriram in Chinese is "Shi Li Nan". Each of them has a Chinese character and they have a meaning. Shi means History, Li means Sharp and Nan means South. Doesn't make any meaning right?

But, thanks to my Chinese teacher who translated my name, it atleast doesn't sound funny. Some funny ones are the famous Hollywood star Brad Pitt in Chinese is "Bù Lā Dé-Pí Tè". Julia Roberts becomes "Zhū Lì Yà - Luó Bó Cí", Tom Cruise "Tānɡ Mŭ-Kè Lŭ Sī". Sounds very funny huh?

It becomes even more funnier when people (who don't know any Chinese) get their name tattooed in Chinese and it ends up giving weird meanings. An NBA player Shawn Marion, wanted his nickname "The Matrix" tattooed in Chinese. The characters he got is a phonetic translation of the word "Matrix", but the characters giving a meaning "Demon Bird Moth Balls".



In another case, a UK teenager named Joanne Raine wanted to have her boyfriend's nickname "Roo" tattooed on her body and ended up getting something that actually meant "Supermarket".



There are many such funny stories. If you are interested in getting a Chinese character tattoo, better show it in paper to some people who know good Chinese and then get it done on your body. Because, once its done, its not so easy to get rid of it.