By the way

This submission caught my eye and I wanted to hopefully help this self submitter and other people thinking about getting this type of tattoo: http://awfulmodifications.tumblr.com/post/34242670902/source#notes

The first picture of her back is what caught my attention. This is something that always drives me nuts about tattoo artists that have absolutely no idea what they are doing. I am very familiar with the Japanese language and am an eternal lover of body mods, and so I just couldn’t stay quiet on this issue.

What’s Awful: In addition to the issues she already posted, the biggest one is actually that it doesn’t say anything. It does not mean ‘love’ (ai) it’s just a bunch of marks that kind of look like Japanese / Chinese kanji. The character for Ai is the same in both languages and they are pronounced only slightly differently.

This is the traditional ai: http://www5.big.or.jp/~otake/hey/kanji/gifmoji/f1/ai.gif

This is a simplified ai: https://thechinadesk.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/love1.gif

As you can see there is a whole lot of differences in either case. I can not count how many people I have seen with something they think says peace/love/tranquility/ect and in actually is gibberish, a completely different word or just random marks.

How it can be fixed: I would highly suggest going to a reputable tattoo parlor and getting this fixed. PLEASE, if you or someone you know are thinking about going to get another language that you are not familiar with tattooed onto your body, be sure to do as much research as possible and if you can, consult someone who is familiar with the language just to be safe!