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Originally Posted by KyleGoetz
Tell your girlfriend she's an idiot for wanting a tattoo in a language she doesn't speak, and she's being borderline racist by objectifying a culture like that.
We get tattoo requests here all the time. We don't like to help because it's stupid to get kanji tattoos about 99% of the time.
Even if you get a correct translation, it will almost undoubtedly get messed up by the tattoo artist anyway, looking ugly forever.
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Hey now, why don't we take it down a notch and keep the flaming to a minimum, alright? I'm gonna go ahead and say calling someone you don't even know an idiot is, uh, pretty uncalled for.
Also, this is absolutely not borderline racist. I haven't asked any of my Japanese friends how they feel about foreigners with kanji tattoos, but having seen people sporting "kitchen", "reverse sexuality", and the kanji for "death" etched backward, I'm pretty inclined to say
be careful when getting a tattoo in a language you don't understand!
Make sure she thinks long and hard about it before you enable her by bringing her what she wants insofar as a translation. Besides... "angels don't sleep"? I'm sure it has personal meaning, but in that case it would be better for her to write it in ENglish, the language in which it has meaning for her. If she writes it in Japanese, that means she's writing it for Japanese people, since she clearly doesn't speak Japanese. And in Japanese, that sentence doesn't really mean anything, nor does it make sense.
That being said, you might be looking to say:
天使は眠らない
(tenshi wa nemuranai)
This means "the angel that doesn't sleep", or "the angel doesn't sleep". Further meanings of "nemuru" would be "die" or "close one's eyes (for sleep)".
天使たちは眠らない
(tenshitachi wa nemuranai)
"Angels never sleep"
But again... it sounds weird.
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Why are you helping this guy? You are contributing to people getting permanently inked with errors.
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I do have to agree, though. I've already explained how the language sounds, but the factors you might not be considering would be the tattoo artist screwing up, or one of you screwing up along the way. With printouts, stencils, redrawing, etc. Unless the artist is native Japanese or Chinese, they won't have any real intimate familiarity with kanji characters, so it will probably not look very natural. (Heck, MY kanji still looks ugly, haha!)
Sorry to keep being such a worry wort, but I'm just being concerned. What you or your girlfriend do with your bodies is ultimately up to you, of course.
