William Spence | 文

 对于任何一个来自英语国家的人，看到中国街边的路牌上写着“The Racist Park”（种族歧视者公园），或者一家餐馆的菜单上写着“smell of urine”（尿臊气），恐怕很难不笑出来。不过，外国人乱用中文的情况也好不到哪里去，而且可能有更为“持久”的后果。

■ For any native English speaker, it’s hard not to laugh when you see a signpost pointing the way to ‘The Racist Park’ or a restaurant menu offering you a dish with the “smell of urine”. But foreigners aren’t exactly innocent when it comes to using Chinese, and often with much more lasting consequences. 

▲ 据说这个路标已经改成“The Park of Ethnic Minorities”了

▲ "臊子”干拌面。。。

长久以来，用汉字纹身在西方一直非常流行，最近更是如此。根据新华社的报道，多达35%的NBA球星在身上纹有中国 “符号”，这反映出在西方人眼中汉字意义非凡，至少从美学角度看很有吸引力。

■ Chinese tattoos have long been popular in the West, perhaps now more so than ever. According to a report by Xinhua, up to 35% of NBA stars have China-themed ‘ink’, reflecting the widespread notion that there is something meaningful or at least aesthetically pleasing about Chinese characters.

不过，考虑到大多数在身上纹汉字的人（以及给他们做纹身的人）都不懂中文，这当中铸成错误的机会可就大了去了，很多时候，错误都是奇葩级别的。

■ But given that the vast majority of people getting these tattoos don’t read Chinese, and the people giving them don’t either, there is huge room for mistakes to be made. Sometimes in quite spectacular fashion.

 随便在网上搜索“拼写有误的汉字纹身”，搜出来的结果够你看几个小时的。在这儿，我们总结了外国人五种最普遍的汉字纹身错误，并选了最精彩/最惨痛的例子放在这儿：

■ Search the internet for misspelled Chinese tattoos and you’ll be scrolling for hours. We’ve established the 5 main types of error foreigners make when it comes to getting a Chinese tattoo, and picked out some the best/worst examples. 

1）错别字：此类错误数量之多，说明人们在意汉字纹身的造型远远超过字的实际意思。看起来人们只是走进全球各地的纹身店，然后要求：“给弄个看着像汉字的纹身呗。”

■ 1: Miswritten hanzi: The sheer quantity of people who fall victim to these kinds of mistakes conveys the extent to which people value the appearance of a tattoo over its actually meaning. It seems people are walking into tattoo shops around the world with the simple request: ‘Chinese looking tattoo please’. 

2）雷人翻译：只是几个随便的汉字，看起来很有吸引力，组合在一起却会带来灾难性的后果。你只能猜测那天谷歌翻译放假了，或者是一些犯罪天才型的纹身师在故意搞怪，而毫无疑心的受害者就这样变成了猎物。

■ 2: Lost in translation: Having a slightly wonky character actually seems pretty desirable compared with some of these catastrophes. You can only assume Google translate was having an off day, or that perhaps there’s some evil-genius tattoo artist out there somewhere, preying on unsuspecting victims. 

3）字写反了：下面这位“阿呆”是给自己代言；而对于一个自认“大麻沉溺”的人，犯个错误也不稀奇；至于“金猪”是怎么回事，谁知道呢？

■ 3: Mirrored characters: The idiot in question here should be self-evident, while perhaps it is quite fitting that a self-confessed ‘Marijuana addict’ should get his tattoo so confused. As for ‘Golden Pig’, who know? 

4）毫无词义：你可能找到了一个懂得如何正确书写汉字的纹身师，你也知道你想纹什么。不幸的是，问题不是到这里就结束了，你很可能最后功亏一篑——因为这些汉字连起来读就不知所谓了，下面是一些例子：

■ 4: No real meaning: So you’ve found a tattoo artist who can write reasonable hanzi, and you know what you want to get. Unfortunately, your problems don’t stop there. Here are a couple of examples of people who made it to the final hurdle, but failed spectacularly when it came to making any grammatical sense. 

5）错到了家：一些纹身店认为汉字和字母语言一样，每个字连在一起就是一个单字或短语。博客“一知半解（Hanzi Smatter）”（一个专门记录中国文字在西方是怎么被曲解的博客），甚至于研究出了一张表格，来解读这些密码般的语言。下面这位纹身者浑然不觉地（或者是一无所知地、笨笨地、疯狂地）认为，根据这份代码表，自己纹在身上的汉字代表着“母亲”（MOM）。

■ 5: The wrong idea altogether: Some tattoo parlors treat Chinese as an alphabetic language, that can be arranged to create words or phrases. Blog Hanzi Smatter, dedicated to highlighting the misuse of Chinese tattoos, even came up with a chart to decode this gibberish. The oblivious (not to mention clueless, idiotic, insane etc.) recipient of this tattoo though she was getting ‘MOM’. 

在中国传统中，纹身原本是一种禁忌，通常标志着犯罪历史。不过近些年来，人们态度已经开放了许多（甚至李娜都有纹身！）。与此同时发生的是，人们开始穿着 写有各种“中式英语”口号的衣服上街。可以想见，也许不久之后，我们就可以看脚腕上纹着“Slut”（荡妇），手臂上写着“Love change location thousand things overcome”，甚至脖子上纹着“toidI”的中国潮人了。

■ Tattoos have traditionally been something of a taboo in China, often signaling a convict past, but attitudes have become MORE liberal in recent years (even Li Na has one!). This, coupled with the apparent willingness of so many Chinese to wear pretty outrageous Chinglish slogans on their clothes suggests that it may not be long before we see people walking around with ‘Slut’ brandished on their ankle, ‘Love change location thousand things overcome’ up their arm, or maybe even a nice ‘toidI’ on their neck.  

总之，在纹身和纹身失误方面，一切皆有可能。

■ When it comes to tattoos, and tattoo mistakes, the possibilities are endless. 

（完） 

作者马威（William Spence）为财新传媒实习研究员

马威（William Spence），生于腐国，长于伦敦。大学毕业，来京北漂。资深球迷，自从出生。差点出演哈利波特电影里的罗恩（同事插话：落选原因大概是太帅）。

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