Hi peachiepoo,

Couple of things I’d like to point out.

– Kanji do have their roots in Chinese as Sherav writes. In fact the “kan” in “kanji” is actually “han” ( translated as “China” ) phoneticized for easier pronunciation for Japanse speakers. “ji” means “character” so you get “Chinese character” or “character from China”. But Chinese characters are not “Chinese Kanji” which I often see posted to this forum. “Chinese Kanji” is a misnomer.

– You can get non-Japanese names transcribed (not translated) which will map the sound of English words to the best matching Japanese kanji. These are, however, in most cases, “false substitute characters” and have no symbolic meaning linked to the word e.g. 亜米利加 = 亜 = A + 米 = ME + 利 = RI + 加 = KA = AMERICA

The actual meanings of these characaters have nothing to do with America but together they’re one example of mapped sounds.

亜 = indicating a low oxidation state
米 = rice
利 = advantage; benefit; profit; interest
加 = addition; increase;

For non-Japanese i.e. foreign words, names, ( e.g. Marvin, Dosha, Arthur and Elaine ) place names, technical terms etc. the Japanese will use the katakana sound syllabary (with no symbolic meanings) rather than kanji. Examples: Alaska =アラスカ / Kevin = ケビン Chance = チャンス However, if you really prefer kanji vs. katakana you can work around the false substitute and map your English names to kanji that have very attractive translated meanings linked to your names. It just takes more time and the characters must be researched and selected carefully. Katakana is very fast.

Feel free to PM me at: tattootranslation@gmail.com if you’d like to discuss this more.

Feel free to PM me at tattootranslation@gmail.com. I’m in Tokyo and work with Roppongi Horiryu, an extremely impressive tattoo master of note.

Pissing contest? Flame war? No. Since most monolingual individuals don’t generally know the difference between the two, I’m simply pointing out some rudimentary differences between Chinese and Japanese. And like you, offering some help. But I’m not going to lose any sleep over one tattoo. Good looking out and my regards to your scholar…friend.

If you want to PM directly with a Japanese/English translator with 35 years of experience feel free to PM me. Speaking a foreign language is not a license to translate language between language pairs. It depends on the source and the target languages and which one you’re most qualified in. Cantonese is not usually written. Cantonese speakers use Classical or Written Standard Chinese when writing. If you want to use Chinese written characters instead of Japanese which characaters do you want to use? Mainlaind Chinese? Taiwanese Chinese? Hong Kong Chinese? They can all be written differently accordingly. And Japanese is different from all of them.

If it’s purely a visual aesthetics issue then all of the above are more or less, generally similiar. Mainland China, Written Standard Chinese, however is kind of ugly, angular, and squarish. If you want pleasing aesthetics and also want to be able to pronounce what your tattoo says….I guarantee you that Japanese is much easier to pronounce for a non-speaker compared to tone-centric, tongue twisiting Mandarin and Cantonese.

Check out oedozakura’s Albums for unmangled [ KI ], dragons, gods, and female demons.

tattootranslation@gmail.com