Mangled Celebrity Tattoos

[Akela]

To give common folk a moment of peace, let us limit this topic to celebrities only



Here is my contribution:

Danelle Lloyd and her complete mess of Latin translation "Quis attero mihi tantum planto mihi validus"

danielle-llyod-tattoo.jpg (20.67 KiB) Viewed 402 times

danielle-llyod-tattoo-closeup.jpg (9.77 KiB) Viewed 402 times

[Nikolaos]

What's a planto?

"Validus"... if the tattoo at least made some kind of sense, the masculine gender here would be very funny.

What language is that other tattoo in?

Ah, I found "planto": "I set".

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[Akela]

I think (I think) it is supposed to say "Only God can judge me" (repeated twice) in Hebrew.

I saw it mentioned somewhere that this is actually an English phrase transliterated with Hebrew alphabet.

[Nikolaos]

I think (I think) it is supposed to say "Only God can judge me" (repeated twice) in Hebrew.

I saw it mentioned somewhere that this is actually an English phrase transliterated with Hebrew alphabet.

Blasphemy!

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[Decimus Canus]

I think (I think) it is supposed to say "Only God can judge me" (repeated twice) in Hebrew.

I saw it mentioned somewhere that this is actually an English phrase transliterated with Hebrew alphabet.

No, that's a separate tattoo she has running down her neck. A while back there was a brief flurry of excitement over a large tattoo that Glasgow Rangers' goalkeeper Allan McGregor had caused to be etched into his side. I recognised "planto" and "validus" immediately. The inspiration in both cases is Friedrich Nietzsche's "Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker."

Both celebreties appear to have been unwise enough to have relied on the Intertran online translator. In Mr. McGregor's case it seems he interpreted the original German as "what does not break me makes me stronger". Intertran turns this into "quis does non effrego mihi planto mihi validus". Either he or his tattooist then compounded this atrocity by dropping the "n" from "planto" transforming it into "plato". The surprising result is that Mr. McGregor, with one string of gibberish, has permanently linked (or should that be "inked"?) himself with two great philosophers.

Ms. Lloyd appears to have interpreted the verb "umbringen" more accurately as "to destroy". For some reason though, she seems to have disdained the negative, instead submitting the nonsensical "what destroys me only makes me stronger" to the Intertran booby trap.

When I was researching the McGregor affair I noticed some discussion of it on Pie and Bovril, a forum for Scottish football fans. I posted an analysis of the tattoo there under the nom de clavier of Tortamphagus. You can find it as post #17 here. A blurry image of the tattoo appears in post #6. Be warned that the site contains a fair amount of extremely robust language, as you might expect.

[Decimus Canus]

This is too precious! The Sun has a story featuring Ms. Lloyd and her classical tattoo. At the top right is a slideshow. Click through to the third entry for a closeup of the offending article. The caption is "Profound ... Dani's new Hebrew tattoo".

[Akela]

Welcome to the forum, Decimus Canus

No, that's a separate tattoo she has running down her neck.

That's the one I meant.


A comment from from the Sun article:

Actually it translates to, "I should not have used an internet translator for something permanently inked on my body". It means nothing in Latin.

Finally, a reader with some common sense

[Nikolaos]

Don't be too optimistic - that comment was posted today, probably by one of us.

"To those who ducked out of Latin..."

hahaha....

[Akela]

Don't be too optimistic - that comment was posted today, probably by one of us.

It is still encouraging.

While we are at it, I would be surprized if anyone with any decent knowledge of Latin reads the Sun regularly... except for maybe during the patches of winter depression

[Cinefactus]

that comment was posted today, probably by one of us.

[Akela]

No kidding?

No "regular" readers with some common sense on the Sun webpage then

[Cinefactus]

A bit off the topic, but I was looking for more photos of garbled celebrity tattoos and found this page. Pretty scary... The first girl appears to have wanted luctor et emergo, and ended up with lector et emergo. And that is one of the better ones. Just at a rough guess, I would say that 20% of them are wrong...

[Iohannes Aurum]

Good thing that Google Translate did not come out with Latin translation capabilities, or else there would be more incorrect translations.

[Decimus Canus]

Welcome to the forum, Decimus Canus

Gratias tibi ago, Akela.

[Cinefactus]

I wonder if we should have a thread with pictures of tattoos from mangled translations, which Akela could mark, so the first hit on a google search for Latin tattoo translation was that thread.

The celebrity pictures are probably fair game, but I guess we would have to ask permission from the victims for the others...