"Loves the Pain"

From reader "Rae S.":



"Hi, great site! You probably get a ton of email requests... but I was wondering if you would take a look at this tattoo. My little sister got it this summer and she says it means "love hurts" I tried to look it up but haven't found any results. Thank you."



First of all, the extra strokes on the right side is not needed.



Secondly, the two characters are indeed "love" and "pain". Except the context is wrong. Instead of saying "love hurts", it says "loves the pain", as in sadism and masochism context.



Lastly, the character for "love" is simplified version. It would be much better if it was done in Traditional version, which would add more elegance:



恋 (traditional version: 戀) = love; long for, yearn for; love

痛 = pain, ache; sorry, sad; bitter



On the good side, it does not say "donkey butt".



Update: I have got an email from Jim Simpson, a Japan-Born-American, which offered his service to be in the "translator pool". Jim has also posted his debut comment under this posting stating that the tattoo above translates "love hurts" in Japanese.



I would also like to re-emphasize on the fact that one thing many people don't realize the Japanese share same Kanji (or Hanzi, Chinese characters) with Chinese, except with slightly different meanings.



Often someone would get a Kanji tattoo with Japanese translation would have complete different meaning if it was read as Chinese. Vice versa.