In the course of my life I've had to figure out a lot of stuff, and I take pride in knowing a little bit about a lot of things. My ex-Mother-In-Law, who was a pretty sharp bird, used to say that I would be her phone-a-friend if she ever got onto Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. It's been a low-level dream of mine to be on Jeopardy!, not that I've made any effort to do so, and I'm not certain I would win, but I'd have a good time. I've surprised people who have come into the shop when I knew who said the quote they wanted to get tattooed on themselves, or I could name the painter of the image they had as a tattoo idea, or that I even could identify the kanji for "strength" or "love" or "family". Not that I can speak Japanese, but you see a symbol about 500 times, you're going to recognize it.
However....I would like to take this opportunity to point out to you, dear readers, that while we're not all total dumbasses who couldn't POSSIBLY be aware of some obscure literary reference, we're also not ultra-masterminds who know every damn thing on the planet. I am particularly addressing the issue that people seem to think we are all ancient language scholars. People like to get tattoos in Hebrew and Arabic and Aramaic and whatever other language they can find that was written on papyrus scrolls and hidden in caves because this means they are worldly and wise and deep and all that shit. And while most tattoo artists can recognize Hebrew and Arabic and Aramaic and whatever other languages were written on papyrus scrolls and hidden in caves, this certainly does not mean we are fluent, or that we have even a basic proficiency with any of them.
A woman came into the shop wanting a Hebrew tattoo. A search of the internet for the word she wanted turned up the very excellent blog Bad Hebrew Tattoos, which I intend to continue reading after I finish writing this entry. Anyway, the blog is correct in pointing out how often Hebrew Tattoos go bad, I can attest to that. Three times in my career I have seen a co-worker trying to deal with a hysterical customer who realized, a week or so later, that the letters are actually upside down. Every time I have to do a Hebrew tattoo, I panic. And I keep panicking until about six weeks later. When I reach that point and I haven't gotten a phone call about it, I relax.
So this woman comes in and wants a Hebrew word on her forearm. I find the image and then we go through the dance about putting it on upside down. Listen, people, we know it's "for you" and "you wanna look at it" and all that, I get it. But as my boss says, "They don't print your T-shirt upside down so you can see it, do they?" I rest my case. So we go through the rigamarole of why, why not, why, why not, until she relents and I put the stencil on, the correct way, so that it reads correctly to anyone who sees it. Now we're going to go through the "is it facing the right way" debacle. If there is one thing that completely puzzles me, it's how adults cannot, no matter how many times I tell them, distinguish their right from their left. And then, they cannot understand that if we are facing each other, their left is my right and my right is their left. I understand that not everyone is fit to grasp Quantum Physics. But if "your right is my left" needs more than a ten second conversation, kill yourself. Seriously. you're just getting in the way of progress.
So, I'm not Jewish and I don't speak or read or write Hebrew. But over the years I've done a lot of Hebrew tattoos. I've picked up a few things, as I have with kanji. I can tell for the most part when the letters are upside down, and I know that Hebrew reads from right to left, unlike English, which you are currently reading from left to right. So I place the stencil on her arm and ask what she thinks, and we begin the right-left confusion.
"It reads from right to left," I say, and point to the symbol at the top right. The lettering was in two lines, so I follow the path, top right to top left, bottom right to bottom left with my finger. She looks baffled.
"Wait....left....so it goes this way...," She stares at her arm, finger frozen over the top-left symbol.
"No," I interject, "this way. Right to left, right to left," I follow the letters agan, and she looks more confused. She returns to the mirror, staring at it, following with her finger the path I'm pointing out. "But, if you're looking at it, it would be the opposite, right?"
"No, If I'm looking at it, I'm reading it from right to left. You're looking at it in the mirror. It's just like it was on the printout, that's exactly what's on your arm."
She agrees and I get down to business. I have tattooed three of the four letters when she makes a remark again about the right-left quandary and then says, "Oh....did I goof?"
I stop tattooing and grab the original printout and hold it up in front of her. "This is correct, yes?" I ask, feeling that familiar hot flush of Hebrew tattoo-panic blooming in my chest, creeping up my neck, tinging my ears red.
"Well...yeah," she points out the letters on the paper, calling them by name, "That's right on the paper, but...."
I cut her off. "What is on the paper is exactly what I put on your arm. They are exactly the same. Same direction." I cover the tattoo with the paper so the letters are positioned exactly over the tattoo, then I pull the paper away, leaving the exact, three-quarter tattooed image on her arm. She stares intently.
"But.....left...." her finger hovers over the top line. "This is my left," she says, waving her left hand.
I set my machine down on the counter a little more forcefully than I should. "Look, I don't speak Hebrew, I don't write Hebrew, you gotta know what this stuff is before...." I trail off, listening to the fear-blood thundering in my ears for a moment. I glance over and see my boss has stopped tattooing and is looking at me. I've gotten loud enough that everyone else in the shop has noticed that there is something going on. And of course, as it goes, the only thing customers will glean from the conversation is that somehow *I* have fucked up a tattoo.
"The tattoo is facing me. If I am looking at it, I am reading it from right to left, like this." I point to the top right letter, then the top left, then the bottom right, then the bottom left. "I'm reading it just like you're supposed to." I'm not actually reading it, of course. I'm just smart enough to know right from left.
"But...," she falters, "this is my right," she wiggles the arm which I have been tattooing.
I wheel around behind her and wrap my arms around so she can see my hands in front of her. "This is my right!" I bark, and wiggle my right hand. "This is my left!" I bark again, and wiggle my left. "This is your right!" I poke her right hand with my right hand. "This is your left!" I poke her left hand with my right hand.I wheel back around to face her. I wave my right hand again. "My right!" I point with it to her left. "Your left!"
Suddenly her face transforms into the beaming expression of ultimate enlightenment! "Ohhhhh!!!!! So, when YOU'RE looking at it, THIS is right, and THIS is left!" She laughs, as if this is all utterly hilarious, and my near coronary is the stuff of sitcoms. I wonder if my blood pressure will ever return to normal again after such a fright.
Really, people. If this is your religion, your life, something so important to you that you wish to have it on your flesh forever, you better know what it is, what it says, how to read it, if it's correct, all that good stuff. I am merely going to copy what it is that you give me. I do not need to speak Hebrew to do a Hebrew tattoo, I simply have to be handed the lettering and I will dutifully replicate it. I have many friends who speak foreign languages, but they have never picked up a tattoo machine a day in their lives. They are not qualified to tattoo you in their native tongue, despite their mastery of it. I do not speak enough of any language to be considered 'fluent' save for English. I'm am totally qualified to do a kick-ass Hebrew or Korean or Arabic tattoo despite my total ignorance of the language, provided you can hand me a picture of it.
Which brings me to another gripe....a young man came into the shop with a quote written in English on paper. He wanted the quote tattooed in Arabic. I told him he would need to get it translated and written out for me. He said, rather disdainfully, "I thought you guys were artists." I told him that yes, we are artists. What we are not is professional translators and dead language scholars. Our job is to tattoo the words on you, comprehension of said words is not at all necessary. We have devoted years and years to the art of designing and executing tattoos, not to learning complex alphabets in ancient languages from the other side of the globe. He left in a huff, disappointed in our 'incompetence', and good riddance. The little asshat did not himself speak the language, so how was he to know that my translation, were I able to provide one, would be correct? I could have put a bunch of squiggly lines on paper and told him that it was some bona fide Arabic, and he would be none the wiser. I've done enough Arabic tattoos that I could draw something on paper that looked enough like Arabic to fool a non-speaker. But I have a conscience, and my conscience will not allow me to knowingly tattoo something that is linguistically incorrect on someone. However, with languages like Arabic, Hebrew or Chinese, which use a completely different alphabet than mine, I wouldn't have a clue what it said, so I myself would have no idea if I was making a mistake. All I know is how to make the tattoo look nice. And I'm not the only one who's vulnerable. Take a look at another fantastic blog devoted to Ol' Roundeye's abuse of Asian culture via tattoos of total gibberish, Hanzismatter. If you're Japanese, and you're in Japan getting a tattoo of a Japanese character from a Japanese artist, chances are extremely good that your tattoo will be correct. But every time you replace 'Japanese' with another ethnicity in the aforementioned scenario, the chance of a mistake increases exponentially. The tattoo can still be quite beautiful, there are some breathtaking examples on the blog, but they are gross grammatical errors that a fluent speaker sees immediately.
Getting it properly translated is your job, doing a good tattoo is mine. You gotta meet us halfway on this one.
