I’ve actually seen a t-shirt that says “white people can’t read this” in Chinese. I want one of those!
It doesn’t require one but you can stick one in there. It depends on the tone you’re after. “Let’s get the leftovers” vs. “How about I/we get the leftovers?”
You must have interesting definitions of “lovely” and “discussion”!
I guess “You gonna eat that?” means “I have eaten all my food and I’m still hungry and I’d like to eat the rest of your food provided you’re done with it, and I probably shouldn’t be asking so soon, since you JUST put down your fork, but I’m really hungry (and slightly ill-mannered).”
If someone could translate that, he could make it into an armband tattoo. Double the cool points.
Couple more brief remarks: t-shirts with random English and occasionally other languages printed on them are very popular here. I’ve yet to talk to anyone who actually knows what their shirt says. Not surprising since most of the printing doesn’t make any sense at all. The stuff featured at Engrish.com is just the whipped-cream topping of the nonsensical shirts around. Most of those actually seem to have a point, whereas a lot of what I see people wearing, or what’s hanging around in stores, looks like Dadaist poetry. Shirts aren’t tattoos, but it shows that the “foreign language = cool” aesthetic isn’t bound to one side of the Pacific.
And not only do they not know what’s on the shirt, most of the time they don’t care about the meaning. If you explained what this shirt said to the girl wearing it, she’d probably say it doesn’t matter what it says. It’s cute and nobody else can understand what’s written there, so no big deal.
I’d appreciate the smart-assed tattoos, but many natives might not get it. I can’t speak to China, since I don’t know the culture, but ironic humor is definitely not common in Japan. A mate from Australia had a hat made up with the saying 英語が分からない！ (I don’t understand English!) on it. He’s had several Japanese people come up and ask him if he understood what was written on the hat. They ask him in Japanese, if he understands some fairly simple Japanese writing. :smack: “Yes, I understand it. I commissioned it.”
I’ve made more than a few sarcastic jokes that required explanations (and reassurances that I wasn’t serious). Nobody seems to think those kind of jokes are funny. I guess it’s no surprise that Japanese humor usually seems a bit broad for my taste. I’ve remarked that if Japanese comedians were prohibited from yelling and smacking their partner, most acts wouldn’t have any material left. Rahmens comes closest to sarcasm that I’ve seen in mainstream comedy, and even they bring things over the top to the point where you absolutely know it’s meant to be a joke.
(You might recognize these guys as the Japanese version of Mac and PC if you’ve watched the commercials for Apple Japan. They’re nicely-done cultural and linguistic translations of the originals.)
Well, I’m assuming that I probably won’t ever encounter anyone who will actually be able to read what I get done, or even be able to get the reference, but I still want it to be accurate. Now, I just have to find a place to get accurate calligraphy of the kanji/kana.