Saturday, January 19, 2013

from: Lisa D. 
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com 
date: Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 2:14 AM 
subject: Fw: Ankle tattoo 'chinese letters'

Hi Tian can u please tell me what the chinese lettering on my ankle means? I was told it meant my name Lisa in chinese lettering? Thanx Lisa 



It does not even look like "Lisa" from that gibberish font.

4 comments:

  1. It definitely doesn't say or even sound like Lisa. Chinese is syllabic. Often "translating" foreign names means to choose characters that are phonologically similar. This a two syllable name like "Lisa" would never be rendered as four characters. What *is* written there? Hard to say..

    夬 = Guai = decisived
    京 = Jing = Capital (as in city)
    ?
    生 = Sheng = life, birth

    At least there's nothing exceptionally offensive there.

    The only rendering for Lisa that I've seen is the same one used for "Mona Lisa": 麗莎 - which translated to something like "Beautiful Grass" but sounds like "Li sha" in Mandarin and "L-eye-sah" in Cantonese.

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  2. But it definitely looks like the gibberish font from this post.

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    Replies
    1. Ah, "Gibberish Font 2." At least that set is actually filled with real characters, unlike Gibberish Font 1. I guess that's a step up?

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    2. You got it. It checks out as Lisa in Gibberish Font 2. Forgot about this one, since it seems to be less well known. This is the one that seems to be made up of characters appearing in phrases such as "Merry Christmas" and "Happy New Year," randomly scattered across letters and numbers to make kind of code sheet. Gibberish to be sure, but a step up from Gibberish Font 1 since it's all real characters.

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