Do Arab people hate tattoos?

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Woods
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Do Arab people hate tattoos?

Postby Woods » 2022-02-21, 21:17

I saw the thread pinned at the top of this forum - "do not request tattoo translations" - and I wondered why is that. And then I remembered one of my friends telling me "I would take any girl, but never one that has a tattoo!" So I wondered if there is a connection - for example, Islam forbidding one from writing anything permanently on one's skin?

nijk

Re: Do Arab people hate tattoos?

Postby nijk » 2022-02-21, 21:38

More likely this subforum was being flooded with requests for tattoo translations.

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Re: Do Arab people hate tattoos?

Postby vijayjohn » 2022-02-21, 21:40

Yeah, pretty much.

The reason why that post exists on this forum has nothing to do with any kind of cultural taboos concerning tattoos. It's just because otherwise, people keep asking for translations of tattoos either to (if they want to get a tattoo themselves) or from (if they want to decipher a tattoo) Arabic. People usually get tattoos in various languages, not just Arabic by any means, without knowing anything about the language at all. This sometimes makes both deciphering tattoos and translating tattoo requests difficult or even impossible. Besides, UniLang is not a translation service. Translating tattoos is not what this forum is for.

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Re: Do Arab people hate tattoos?

Postby Woods » 2022-02-22, 0:44

vijayjohn wrote:The reason why that post exists on this forum has nothing to do with any kind of cultural taboos concerning tattoos. It's just because otherwise, people keep asking for translations of tattoos either to (if they want to get a tattoo themselves) or from (if they want to decipher a tattoo) Arabic.

But isn't this a fun way to learn Arabic?

Can we not just tell them to put them all in one thread, or something like that?

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Re: Do Arab people hate tattoos?

Postby vijayjohn » 2022-02-22, 2:07

Woods wrote:But isn't this a fun way to learn Arabic?

No. All they usually want is the translation for one phrase. They have zero interest in actually learning it.
Can we not just tell them to put them all in one thread, or something like that?

People are terrible at following that rule especially when they're new users like almost everyone asking for translations in general, tbh. They just ask for a translation and then never post again, often not even to say thank you after they get a reply.

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Re: Do Arab people hate tattoos?

Postby Woods » 2022-02-22, 10:57

vijayjohn wrote:
Woods wrote:But isn't this a fun way to learn Arabic?

No. All they usually want is the translation for one phrase. They have zero interest in actually learning it.

I find it real stupid to put something on your skin that you don't even understand (not that I like tattoos anyway), but I guess I might imagine myself in a situation where I'd like to know what the thing on somebody's hand means. So why would an inscription on a stone be fine, but if it is on skin - then not?

And isn't it cool that Arabic is trendy? I think if people prefer that script for tattoos, it just adds to its cool factor.


vijayjohn wrote:
Woods wrote:Can we not just tell them to put them all in one thread, or something like that?

People are terrible at following that rule especially when they're new users like almost everyone asking for translations in general, tbh. They just ask for a translation and then never post again, often not even to say thank you after they get a reply.

I see. But what if someone is genuinely interested - what impression will they get of the forum if they come and post their question, and then it just disappears?

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Re: Do Arab people hate tattoos?

Postby vijayjohn » 2022-02-22, 14:33

Forums in general have become far less popular by now than they used to be. UniLang in particular is kind of obscure, catering to certain niche interests (linguistics and language-learning), and mostly dead anyway. I don't think it's very likely to scare people off just by banning tattoo requests from one or two subforums.

It's still possible to ask for tattoo translations in this thread, for example, just not here on the Arabic subforum.

nijk

Re: Do Arab people hate tattoos?

Postby nijk » 2022-02-25, 9:59

vijayjohn wrote:
Woods wrote:But isn't this a fun way to learn Arabic?

No. All they usually want is the translation for one phrase. They have zero interest in actually learning it.
Can we not just tell them to put them all in one thread, or something like that?

People are terrible at following that rule especially when they're new users like almost everyone asking for translations in general, tbh. They just ask for a translation and then never post again, often not even to say thank you after they get a reply.


Agreed. When it comes to language spaces on the internet, requests for translations for tattoos are one of the most obnoxious things ever. They're usually requested by people who have no idea how language works so they think you can translate everything with a one-to-one correspondence, plus they seem completely clueless about the fact that language is really culture-dependent, so what might sound fine in American English, might sound completely off in Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit, Japanese or in other languages.

In this video, Dr. Crawford (an Old Norse specialist) talks exactly about this problem and explains why he stopped accepting translation requests.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_wM_EOWHqY&t=1h06m35s

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Re: Do Arab people hate tattoos?

Postby Woods » 2022-02-26, 11:02

nijk wrote:Agreed. When it comes to language spaces on the internet, requests for translations for tattoos are one of the most obnoxious things ever. They're usually requested by people who have no idea how language works so they think you can translate everything with a one-to-one correspondence, plus they seem completely clueless about the fact that language is really culture-dependent, so what might sound fine in American English, might sound completely off in Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit, Japanese or in other languages.

All right. My thought is just that we as educated and enlightened people about how languages work should do our part in educating them, and I wouldn't say banning their requests is the right way to do so.

nijk

Re: Do Arab people hate tattoos?

Postby nijk » 2022-02-26, 11:05

Woods wrote:
nijk wrote:Agreed. When it comes to language spaces on the internet, requests for translations for tattoos are one of the most obnoxious things ever. They're usually requested by people who have no idea how language works so they think you can translate everything with a one-to-one correspondence, plus they seem completely clueless about the fact that language is really culture-dependent, so what might sound fine in American English, might sound completely off in Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit, Japanese or in other languages.

All right. My thought is just that we as educated and enlightened people about how languages work should do our part in educating them, and I wouldn't say banning their requests is the right way to do so.


Unless someone pays me, no thanks, lol.

(also, they don't care, they just want a tattoo)

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Re: Do Arab people hate tattoos?

Postby vijayjohn » 2022-02-27, 3:29

Woods wrote:All right. My thought is just that we as educated and enlightened people about how languages work should do our part in educating them, and I wouldn't say banning their requests is the right way to do so.

I don't think we are "educated and enlightened people," just people who happen to be interested in Arabic and know at least a little bit of it. By contrast, people who ask for translation requests often just ask for a translation and then never even seem to look at this forum again. You can't get people like that interested in learning Arabic. They're not even staying long enough to see whether they got a reply here! They might as well have just not posted at all.

nijk

Re: Do Arab people hate tattoos?

Postby nijk » 2022-02-27, 9:52

vijayjohn wrote:I don't think we are "educated and enlightened people," just people who happen to be interested in Arabic and know at least a little bit of it.


To be perfectly honest, I don't know any Arabic at all. :lol: But this tattoo thing is actually a common plight for lots of languages (maybe not on here, but definitely on the internet at large).

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Re: Do Arab people hate tattoos?

Postby vijayjohn » 2022-02-27, 14:55

nijk wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:I don't think we are "educated and enlightened people," just people who happen to be interested in Arabic and know at least a little bit of it.


To be perfectly honest, I don't know any Arabic at all. :lol:

Okay, but I think most of us who do participate in the Arabic forum do speak at least a little!
But this tattoo thing is actually a common plight for lots of languages (maybe not on here, but definitely on the internet at large).

I think it is here, too. It's just not as visible nowadays since there's much less activity here than there used to be.

mezaninstitute

Re: Do Arab people hate tattoos?

Postby mezaninstitute » 2022-03-16, 13:02

To be honest, I don't think this problem is for Arabic only. :lol: However, tattoos are a common problem for people in different countries. So some people likes some dont.

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Re: Do Arab people hate tattoos?

Postby OiJoua » 2023-10-10, 21:15

Tattoos tend to get misused. People will use something because they think it "looks cool" but they don't understand the cultural meaning or don't know that it's misspelled or backwards or written in terrible handwriting. This is true whether Arabic, chinese, thai, etc. Any language that people think "looks" cool but they don't actually know the words or the alphabets. Being "trendy" doesn't benefit a culture, it makes it more kitschy and less authentic. Things get used in wrong ways or done too cheaply (not just by $$, also spiritually cheap, socially cheap - without the real cultural meaning that it should have). So it's not about hating all tattoos. Just hating tattoos that appropriate a culture that the person carrying it does not belong to or misrepresent that culture. If someone has to come to an online forum to ask how to write something for a tattoo, they probably shouldn't have it because they don't know that language or culture.
If you belong to a culture, you should have people IRL (in real life) who can help you with it if you don't know it yourself.


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