need help translating symbols

[stevefromga2000]

Hello, i'm new to this forum, but i am currently stationed in japan serving the u.s. air force. anyways, i have a tattoo that i was told means evil, or wicked, and i'm looking to get a matching symbol that means love next to it. they are both part of a much larger piece of artwork that i want to get, but i want to make sure that it is done correctly. can somebody please help me verify if this does mean what i was told it means, and where can i find the symbol for love also. thank you for any help possible.

[hplaserjet6p]

yes it does.

love →　愛

[nice gaijin]

邪　is read "yokoshima," and is a kind of adjective whose dictionary definition is indeed "evil/wicked," though I've never seen it used before by itself. That character is probably most commonly seen in the compound 邪魔、meaning "in the way, hindrance"

love is 愛, but i must say that it would be rather nonsensical to tattoo these characters on yourself, at least from a linguistic standpoint.

[stevefromga2000]

i am looking to tell a story about how every person has the right to choose their own destiny, rather it be to go with love, or hate. when i got this tattoo, i was a lot younger, and didn't really put much thought into it. now that i am a little older, maybe wiser too, lol, i would like to put this in as a sort of chapter in my story. i would like to have a path that has a fork, and each side of that fork goes to each symbol, or set of symbols. do you have any recommendations on what to do now that already have this part? i am open to any suggestions, especially because i would like for this to be done correctly

[nice gaijin]

well, the character 愛 is a bit cliche by now, seeing as it's been tattooed on just about every 18 year old girl's backside. The thing is you are talking about getting individual characters done, which is one of the reasons why it's nonsensical. The words by themselves have their individual meaning, but don't tell a story by any stretch of the imagination.

If you must use a single character, I would recommend 善, which is more like virtue/goodness, or 徳, which means virtue and is a part of tons of compounds which mean things like morality etc.

I would recommend simply doing this in a language you understand, so you could more easily understand the context and significance of the words you choose. Most people who get kanji tattoos have no respect or prior knowledge of the languages they cherry pick from and simply take them out of a book or online word search because they look exotic and supposedly have a translated meaning that is significant to them in ENGLISH, then go to a tattooist that has no idea how to write proper Japanese or Chinese calligraphy. This often results in disaster of one sort or another (see www.hanzismatter.com for examples).

If you're dead set on getting these characters, first you should do a lot of research. Start by going to JDIC (http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1C) and putting those characters in, and looking at all of the results. You can also search in English. But remember, a dictionary doesn't give context; it's easy to choose words that might have alternate implications.

[Mike Cash]

I would be very circumspect about randomly adding characters adjacent to each other.