Getting a Foreign Language Quote Tattooed: Mistakes to Avoid

Spelling mistakes, syntax errors, even totally erroneous translation: getting a tattoo of a quote in a foreign language is not without risk. To avoid ending up with a tattoo that means nothing, it is better to have your back.

A quote in a foreign language: a great classic of tattoos

Song lyrics, philosophical quotes or simply the translation of words we like: getting a tattoo in a foreign language assumes that the viking hawaiian shirt future tattooed person knows what he is talking about… and this is not always the case.

Know the vocabulary and conjugation of the target language

There’s nothing wrong with getting a tattoo in a foreign language , but be sure to write a sentence that makes sense. Having a tattoo in English, German, Italian or Spanish therefore requires the tattooed person to know how to write without fail, in the chosen language. It is not the tattoo artist who will take care of it when inlaying ink under the skin. You have to know how to choose the right vocabulary to use, and know the conjugation at your fingertips. To correctly translate a quote in a foreign language, do not take the first word in the dictionary without understanding what it refers to. A word can have several meanings. Also beware of online translators who translate approximately. Finally, it is obviously necessary to avoid transcribing the oral. It is not because a word is pronounced in one way that it is necessarily written as one hears it.

Have the quote read over before getting it tattooed

Even if there are techniques to erase it, a tattoo is theoretically indelible. It would be a shame to end up with a big fault in the middle of the arm. The best way not to make a mistake in a tattoo is to seek the advice of one or more native people or an expert in the target language. It is also possible to use a sentence already in the chosen language. This is the case with song lyrics or certain literary and poetic quotations. This avoids translation errors. It is still necessary to be able to copy them without making any mistakes, of course.

Get a tattoo of a quote in another writing system

It’s not just the Latin alphabet in the world. We all remember the fashion for tattoos of Chinese or Maori signs. If the desire to get a quote tattooed in another writing system can be understood, the risk of error is extremely high, unless you get a tattoo by a native speaker of this language.

These exotic quotes that can have other meanings

Arabic, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Thai… These writing systems are certainly very aesthetic but above all they have a meaning. Knowing how to reproduce signs or ideograms is not everything, you have to understand what is being said and also take into account the complexity of the language used. First, some systems are read left to right, right to left, or top to bottom. The place of the words will therefore vary from one system to another. You must avoid “copying and pasting” a quotation into another system at the risk of having an incomprehensible sentence for a native of the language. Also, some signs can be associated with each other to form another word. This is the case of ideograms which can have a different meaning if they are associated with other ideograms.

Getting a quote in imaginary language tattooed: an advantage?

To avoid being the laughing stock of everyone because of an unfortunate spelling mistake or a word misplaced in the sentence, there is a rather attractive alternative: get a tattoo in an imaginary language, such as Elvish, for example. Certainly, these pretty patterns have a meaning and like any language, it would be a shame to limit them to the beauty of their writing. However, the advantage of getting an Elvish quote tattoo is that few people are able to decipher these symbols, so if there is a mistake, almost no one will know. Still, don’t go to a Lord of the Rings fan convention…

The tattoo quote: it’s not only in a foreign language that you can make mistakes

French is often not spared by tattoo artists and tattooed people. Among the classic faults, tattooed on the skin, we find:

Conjugation errors (chords, time)

Yes, the French conjugation is not always easy: there are three different groups of verbs, one of which is full of verbs with all skull ugly sweater kinds of exceptions, but reviewing your conjugations before getting a tattoo should help avoid mistakes . You should not limit yourself to the present indicative either, in case the imperative or the past tense have slipped into the quotation. Last advice: do not confuse the verb to have and to be.

“The greatest treasures are those found not by the eye but by the heart” French tattoo

Spelling mistakes

They can be numerous depending on the imagination of the author of the sentence, so it is difficult to list them all. However, the great classics remain the missing -s in the plural or the confusion between the different sounds: -en and -an, for example. The same goes for syntax errors. The most common error found on the skin of unfortunate tattooed people is the absence of “ne” in a negative sentence, but this is obviously not exhaustive.