Uhm, no. Well, I'm not even sure what character you mean by karma, but I shudder at the thought of a putting 'fox' and 'karma' together. If it meant anything (which I doubt) it wouldn't be good. Foxes are never good for people.

Jarvik7 Wrote:That depends, what is a "karma fox"?

Karma (業) basically just means "work" and isn't in itself a spiritual word when it's not used in a spiritual context. If you just slap the kanji together it will mean "WORKFOX". Note: karma usually just means BAD karma. No karma is what Buddhists seek to achieve.

Also note that foxes are untrustworthy troublemakers in traditional Japanese culture (though Inari is one of the most important gods in Shinto among agricultural types, probably because if you don't placate her she'll ruin your crops).

So if someone gets that you mean karma and not work, you will end up having a tattoo that technically means someone who is untrustworthy and sins a lot.

It's also kind of awkward to mix a Buddhist concept (karma) with something that has strong Shinto connotations (foxes).

As others have said, think about if what you want tattood would sound equally cool in English. Putting it in kanji doesn't make it +5 awesome just because none of your friends can read it.

I will second the other posters who say use a set 4-character-phrase (yojijukugo) that has a meaning that aligns with your beliefs instead of a random assortment of kanji that aren't joined up and can be taken out of context. Ex: if you want to look like a tough guy get 弱肉強食 (literally: the strong eat the weak, or survival of the fittest).

Lol that makes sense. The reason I wanted Karma is because it's what I believe in mostly and Fox because I am getting a fox on the bottom of the Kanji, and I wanted Soldier because I am joining the military.
弱肉強食 with a fox sounds pretty cool however. It makes sense too.

因果応報 means "reap what you sow", but again it only really references punishment for misdeeds, not rewards for good deeds. I guess you could you spin it as you delivering divine punishment.

Rather than nonsense kanji soup you could get that and the one from my last post done vertically with a traditional looking picture of a fox sandwiched between. That would be a reasonably acceptable tattoo. It would look pretty good with sleeves too but you're getting into yakuza territory pretty far.

Just get it done in Japan by a Japanese tattoo artist or it'll look like absolute crap (even if the tattoo artist is otherwise skilled). Nothing makes someone look like a bigger tool than a bad tattoo.

Jarvik7 Wrote:因果応報 means "reap what you sow", but again it only really references punishment for misdeeds, not rewards for good deeds.

haha I literally just read that and refreshed this page and saw yours. I like survival of the fittest alot, do you know of any more?

There are thousands and they actually sound good as tattoos instead of "haha look at the stupid foreigner".

For looking like a hard soldier guy:
七転八起 essentially means perseverance (fall down seven times get up eight).
必勝不敗 = certain victory
活殺自在 = power over life and death
玉砕主義 = death before surrender (though this has strong WW2 connotations)

etc

Here is a page with a bunch (note that some are just words that happen to be four characters and aren't actual idioms):

http://home.earthlink.net/~4jword/index3.htm

Just don't try to use a whole bunch. Less is more.

kolkim Wrote:Lol that makes sense. The reason I wanted Karma is because it's what I believe in mostly and Fox because I am getting a fox on the bottom of the Kanji, and I wanted Soldier because I am joining the military.

So why don't you just get "Karma soldier" tattooed in English, along with a picture of a fox? Like a few others, I'm confused why you want a message you can't read or understand, that you pulled from random internet posters and google translate, inked on your body for eternity.

If you think Chinese words are someone more spiritual, then sorry but that's patronising BS. Most Asians will be laughing at you. If you think a kanji tattoo would just look cooler, then I suggest you find a decent tattooist who can design a proper creative piece in an English font.

If your heart is really set on this idea, at the very least find an Asian tattooist who understands chinese characters; 90% of the mistakes on hanzismatter are from Western artists who don't know (or care) that they're actually writing.

[Katsuo]

Many posters here and on the hanzismatter site say you shouldn't get a tattoo in a language you can't read. Isn't that part of the attraction though? It means that the tattoo retains an element of mystery. Most people getting such tattoos will normally socialize with others who can't read it, and the meaning can be a talking point.

There are thousands of kanji but only 26 letters in the alphabet, so from that point of view there is more choice.

@Katsuo: I think what everyone wants to say is that getting something that sounds stupid in English inked in kanji doesn't make it cool, it just hides the stupidity behind a linguistic barrier (and that is assuming the desired concept is rendered into correct Japanese/Chinese).

That is combined with the fact that most western tattoo artists aren't familiar with the characters and usually mess them up or just do a bad job artistically to make it a bad idea in most cases.

I think you should get a tramp stamp that says 手が早い. Literally it means "quick-hands," or a quick worker, but it can also mean a man who picks up women quickly--a man-slut.

Something about a man with a tramp stamp that means man-slut makes me laugh.

Tzadeck Wrote:but it can also mean a man who picks up women quickly--a man-slut.

Close, but not really. It means a man who becomes physical quickly in a relationship, or is physical immediately whenever he meets his gf on a date etc.

A man-slut is a やりちん (woman-slut is やりまん). Someone who is easy is かるい. A man-slut can also be ちゃらい but the nuance is slightly different (more like a guy who is constantly hitting on girls than simply someone who gets laid a lot).

Ah, I see. A Japanese friend explained it to me, but it was in Japanese so I probably misunderstood him.

Sooo... just do what I said above, but with やりチン.

Also, thank god that tramp stamps have not caught on in Japan.

kolkim Wrote:I am getting a tattoo with these 7 words but I know that there are different Kanji words for the same word as well as different languages of Kanji.
I am wondering if these are the best choices of those words and if those words are artistically correct.
If there is a better way to write a certain word please tell me.
I hope this link works
http://s795.photobucket.com/albums/yy237...attoos.png

I asked my girlfriend, who is native Japanese, what she thought of those kanji for a tattoo and she started laughing. "Is he in some religious cult?"

Then I asked what meanings she thought of when looking at them: "Well, it looks like he wants to be a rich king...he wants to have a family...he wants to molest girls...he wants to work at a hotel...then graduate from something?"

So, enjoy those tats!

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:The picture you showed doesn't make any sense in the first place.
軍狐 doesn't mean anything, it's the character for 'military' and the character for 'fox' jammed together and that's all (and if 'army fox' seems like it means something in English - and that seems ambiguous at best to me - the problem is Japanese folklore has its own quite specific connotations for foxes.)

軍 -is- pronounced 'gun' and -is- the second half of 将軍 'shogun', which is basically a compound meaning 'leader of the army', or more naturally, 'General'.

帝 is not (in Japanese at least) a prefix for 'supreme' or any such. It's not really a prefix at all, although it shows up at the beginning of many 'imperial' words. It's tempting to call it the 'imperial' prefix, but I think it's more of a root word. I don't know about in Chinese, but in Japanese it is a character that really references the Emperor of Japan specifically (well, uses in fantasy literature for fictional empires notwithstanding).

You can't just jam any two characters together because an English word associated with them sounds good - if the characters are words by themselves then you now have two random words stuck next to each other with no grammatical context. If the characters together make a word, it will be the sheerest luck if that word means what you hope it means.

You need to decide also if you're writing in Japanese, Mandarin, or Cantonese if you hope to have any sort of meaning at all. Meanings have diverged in the three languages.

帝 is not a prefix although it's used in certain words as prefix but more like a adjective-suffix in Chinese to denote someone is the top of certain fields.

Examples of current usage in Mandarin would be:

皇帝 = Emperor
雀帝 = Champion of Mahjong
天帝 = King of the heavens
玉皇大帝 = Supreme ruler of Heaven and Earth (Zeus equivalent in Chinese Mythology)
上帝 = God (of Abraham religions)
称帝 = To declare oneself as the Emperor

kolkim Wrote:

istel Wrote:皇帝 = Emperor, literally King among kings. 帝 is normally almost never used alone by itself for Mandarin as it's usually joined to another noun to signify that someone is the top in a certain field. It does carry the nuance of supreme being I guess...

If 帝 alone means supreme, could I pair it with another word like this?

http://s795.photobucket.com/albums/yy237...emefox.png

Would that make sense?

Well, 狐帝 would literally means Ruler of all foxes in Chinese although it's does not sound natural while 軍帝 would be literally recognized as "army, emperor".

Like Japanese, Chinese characters has different nuances when paired with other different characters...

Similarly, although they share the same base, the same kanji might have very different meanings in Japanese and Mandarin...

Have to agree with CMC on what he's said in regards to jamming two characters together based on its literal English equivalents.

kolkim Wrote:

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:The picture you showed doesn't make any sense in the first place.
軍狐 doesn't mean anything, it's the character for 'military' and the character for 'fox' jammed together and that's all (and if 'army fox' seems like it means something in English - and that seems ambiguous at best to me - the problem is Japanese folklore has its own quite specific connotations for foxes.)

軍 -is- pronounced 'gun' and -is- the second half of 将軍 'shogun', which is basically a compound meaning 'leader of the army', or more naturally, 'General'.

帝 is not (in Japanese at least) a prefix for 'supreme' or any such. It's not really a prefix at all, although it shows up at the beginning of many 'imperial' words. It's tempting to call it the 'imperial' prefix, but I think it's more of a root word. I don't know about in Chinese, but in Japanese it is a character that really references the Emperor of Japan specifically (well, uses in fantasy literature for fictional empires notwithstanding).

You can't just jam any two characters together because an English word associated with them sounds good - if the characters are words by themselves then you now have two random words stuck next to each other with no grammatical context. If the characters together make a word, it will be the sheerest luck if that word means what you hope it means.

You need to decide also if you're writing in Japanese, Mandarin, or Cantonese if you hope to have any sort of meaning at all. Meanings have diverged in the three languages.

Thanks alot, the guy before you confused me. Would Karma Fox work?

Note that whatever I said earlier applies only to Mandarin/Chinese not Japanese and it should make things clearer for you.

軍狐 literally means you're a fox of an army in Chinese, it could be used as a nick by Chinese people on online forums or games but it's not commonly used as no armies in the world has used foxes right?

Now 軍犬 which is literally army hound makes sense because dogs are widely used in armies and police forces in the world and those who understand Chinese would know that you're talking about trained dogs in armies' employment.

I hope you see now why certain things that doesn't make sense at all in Japanese could mean something in Chinese and vice-versa. Could go on forever on how current Chinese societies make new words conveniently by combining two totally unrelated characters. It will be deemed as an acceptable "word" in Mandarin once it gains popular usage, but this is not a Mandarin/Chinese forum.

Jarvik7 Wrote:@Katsuo: I think what everyone wants to say is that getting something that sounds stupid in English inked in kanji doesn't make it cool, it just hides the stupidity behind a linguistic barrier (and that is assuming the desired concept is rendered into correct Japanese/Chinese).

That is combined with the fact that most western tattoo artists aren't familiar with the characters and usually mess them up or just do a bad job artistically to make it a bad idea in most cases.

QFT.

Chinese novelists are known to just invent some unknown names/concepts just by adding some historical cultural references.

For example: a popular chinese novelist created a fictional sect in his novels that is supposed to exist during the Qing dynasty called the 日月神教 (literally: The sect of the Sun and Moon Deities, which just sounded funny in English).

This sect is related to another sect called the Ming Sect (明教) which is dedicated to starting a coup to return ruling powers from the Qing Dynasty back to the previous Ming dynasty (明朝). You can understand this easily as Ming (明) signifies the era during Ming dynasty rule and 教 which means teaching, literally makes the word 明教 = "The teachings of Ming" which symbolized the sect's purpose. It can also be read as the sect of enlightenment which 明 could also stand for.

日月神教 is alluded to be the forked version of 明教 which can be seen when you split 明 by its radical to 日 and 月. Since the emperor back then in China ruled with the mandate of God (i.e. 神) the story is scripted in such a way that made it clear that this forked version of sect's purpose was to install its head as the ruler of China by teaching that they had the mandate of God (i.e. 神) to rule. We would also learned later that the original founder of this sect is related to the old Ming monarchs and the Ming Sect founders.

The novelist hinted in an author's page that this fictional sect was inspired by Islam as the symbols for Islam is actually the Star (as the Sun is technically a star) and the Crescent (i.e. the 日 and 月) and there's a significant Muslim population in China especially during the Ming/Qing Dynasty. The word 神 that is the God (i.e. Allah in this case) together with the word teaching (教) meant the teaching of God (神教)

As you can see, he created a name and made it sound cool and seemingly logical just by conjugating all these words of different concepts together with a story that can be understood by most Chinese with background knowledge of China's history.

Unfortunately in TS's case, he does not have such cultural references nor background knowledge of China or Japan to make such names/concepts intriguing... As such, it's best if he tries to stick to set phrases and not create his own Chinese or Japanese phrases based on its literal English meaning...

Apologies for the 3x lengthy and OOT posts.

There are, btw, many established 'Secret Alphabets' that no longer live up to their name. It's always possible to pick one of those and transliterate any English message into mysterious sigils, with the advantage that you and anyone you teach the alphabet to can read it.

Seems like there's no wikipedia page on it and there is a pop song by that name, so the google search gets pretty mixed results; still, a search google-images still shows a fair number of charts of various alphabets.

[Zgarbas]

I think you should just get the soldiers of fortune lyrics. In English. You can't go wrong with that, the tat guy will know what to do with it, and Deep Purple will never get old =).

On a more serious level, it seems to me that you keep hanging your mind about what you want. Maybe you should take some time off and rethink this before getting it done.

edit: Goddamnit, got the song in my head now. Another plus for the "Soldier of fortune"tat: the song will instantly get in everyone who sees it's head, thus leaving a mark far greater than if he/she had just seen random Kanjis =).