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Hi
Athena,
Just wanted to say *Great Job*. I Really liked your suggestions.
Bob J. NY
Athena,
I'm so glad I found this site before gettin my tatoo. Tattoo
looks coooool! x
Suzie K. Toronto
Fantastic
service Athena. Expect more requests from my buddies.
Jay. Sacramento
Miss
Min,
Looks
very nice with Character from you. I feel pride. Thanking you
from Singapore
Tam S. Singapore
Athena,
AWESOME
symbols. Thanx for the cool suggestions.
Brad
M. Wyoming
Hey
Athena,
My
gf says you *rock*. She loved the translation of my name. Shes
gonna order a translation for her mom this week.
Peter
S . Iowa
Athena,
COOOL
characters :) You are so clever. I LOVE the translation you
did for me. Thanks a lot.
Jolie
M . NZ
Athena,
I've
tried other sites and they are a rip off. Your stuff is THE
BEST. My brother will be ordering from you next week, look out
for an order from Jake.
Alan
W . NY
Athena,
Great site, great products. I love my tattoo thanks to you.
Helen
G. Notts (UK)
Min
Athena,
Even for Chinese tattoo character from your is better than from
most native. Thank you for suggestion on me.
Jackie
Wong - AUS
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Chinese Kanji Tattoos and Japanese Kanji Tattoos
Chinese kanji tattoos and Japanese kanji tattoos
are the same thing right? RIGHT and WRONG - It’s important
to understand what Kanji are before you get inked.
I
receive many questions asking if I can suggest good Japanese
kanji to be used in tattoo designs. When I explain that
I am Chinese and not Japanese people normally get confused
and say something like “well, Chinese kanji and
Japanese kanji are the same aren’t they?”
I
don’t blame western people for being confused because
you need to understand a bit about the history of Chinese
writing Japanese writing before it makes sense.
Potted history
of Chinese writing
The
Chinese were the first peoples to develop a system of
writing based on characters.
In fact, the Chinese have been using various systems of
writing based on pictorial characters for many thousands
of years.
Like all ancient history, the exact date when the Chinese
started using characters is not known but evidence has
been found stretching back over four thousand years.
It’s
quite easy to understand how the Chinese character system
could have evolved. If you wanted to tell someone about,
say, a Mountain then you’d draw a picture of a Mountain.
Now, everyone draws mountains slightly differently but
over time a standard character for mountain would have
been devised and widely adopted. The same for the Sun,
the Moon etc. Other characters for more Big, Small, Near
and far would have evolved in the same way.
Over
time (and remember we have four millennia of time to play
with!) a rich and complex language evolved with as many
as 60,000 Chinese characters being in existence. Modern
day Chinese uses about 6,000 or so.
Along come
the Japanese and see something they like |
| OK,
now this is where it can get a bit confusing. The Japanese
language also consists of Characters.
Many Japanese characters are actually the same
characters as in Chinese. There is a very simple reason
for this; the Japanese ‘borrowed’ them from
the Chinese language.
The
Chinese characters which have been incorporated into the
Japanese writing system are known as “Kanji”.
|
|
To
be really accurate, there is no such thing as Chinese kanji,
the Chinese symbols only become known as kanji when they have
made the jump into the Japanese ‘alphabet’.
So
far so good but where the confusion sets in is that once in
Japanese, the Chinese symbol - now called kanji - is used to
mean something different to what it meant in Chinese. Not only
that, but as the Chinese and Japanese spoken languages are entirely
different, the Chinese symbol is pronounced completely differently.
I
like to think of it this way. The Japanese saw our Chinese symbols,
decided some of them looked really nice and decided to use them
in their own language to represent something, but not
necessarily the same thing, as we use them to represent.
Because Japanese is an entirely different language to Chinese,
they gave the characters a sound which was easy for them to
say in Japanese.
The Japanese don’t use all of the characters from Chinese
but they do use several thousand of them. They also have their
own character sets called Hiragana and Katakana which are used
together with kanji.
Japanese Kanji Tattoos vs Chinese Character Tattoos
I
hope I have been able explain why getting a word or phrase translated
into Japanese and Chinese might result in different characters.
It’s
really important to ensure that if you want a phrase translated
in Chinese you find someone who has a thorough understanding
of the Chinese language. Similarly, if you want a Japanese translation
use a Japanese translator.
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