Check Chinese characters before you print, engrave or tattoo

Chinese characters turn up on prints, mugs, jewellery, engravings and tattoos, and a surprising number of them say something other than what the owner intended. Most of these mistakes are not exotic. They come from a handful of predictable sources, and a short checklist catches nearly all of them. Run it before anything permanent is made, and again on the final proof.

Where the mistakes come from

- Machine translation of a single English word, which picks a character with the wrong nuance, or a word that only works inside a longer sentence.

- Dictionary look-ups that return one character out of context, when the natural Chinese word has two.

- Copying text from a website or image that mixes simplified and traditional forms, or that uses Japanese kanji forms that differ from the Chinese ones.

- Fonts and design software that substitute a missing glyph, show an empty box, or render a character from a different regional standard.

- Layout by someone who does not read Chinese, who mirrors, rotates or reorders characters to fit a design.

Knowing these sources tells you exactly what to check.

Check the text: meaning, form and reading

Start with the words, before any style is chosen. Ask a fluent reader what the phrase means as a whole, not character by character. Confirm whether the piece should use simplified characters, as in mainland China and Singapore, or traditional characters, as in Taiwan, Hong Kong and many overseas communities, and keep it consistent. If the text is a name, confirm the exact characters with the person, because many names share a sound but use different characters.

Then say it aloud. Chinese has many homophones, and a phrase can sound like something unfortunate even when it reads well. The number four, si, sounds close to the word for death, which is why some people avoid it on gifts. A Mandarin speaker and, where relevant, a Cantonese speaker may hear different things in the same text.

Check the shapes

Small strokes change characters. Da, meaning big, becomes tai, meaning too or extremely, with one extra dot. Tu, earth, and shi, scholar, differ only in which horizontal stroke is longer. Ji, self, yi, already, and si, one of the calendar signs, differ in how far a single stroke closes. In a printed font these differences are clear. In brush calligraphy, especially running or cursive script, strokes merge, and a rushed reading can go wrong.

For anything permanent, ask for two versions to check: the text in a plain standard font, and the final artwork. The reader confirms the plain version first, then confirms that the artwork still reads as the same characters.

Check the layout

Even correct characters can be arranged wrongly:

- Never mirror the artwork. Stencils and engraving files are sometimes flipped, so check which side is meant to face the viewer.

- Do not rotate individual characters to fit a vertical or circular design.

- Modern horizontal text reads left to right. Vertical text reads top to bottom, with columns running from right to left.

- Keep spacing even so that two characters do not appear to merge into one.

- Think about size. Engraving and tattooing tend to lose or thicken fine strokes, so dense characters need more room than they would on a print.

Who should check, and how

Use at least one fluent reader who is not invested in the design, and ideally two who check independently of each other. Give them the final file, not just the text you typed. Ask them to read it back and say what it means, rather than asking whether it says what you intended; people tend to agree with a leading question.

Then check the final proof or stencil from the printer, engraver or tattoo artist, because errors also creep in after the artwork leaves your hands. A file that was correct on your screen can still be resized, cropped or flipped in production.

How the studio handles characters

Our name and inscription work starts with a characters-confirmed step: the exact characters, simplified or traditional forms and reading are agreed before writing begins, and a watermarked proof is sent before the final file. If you plan to engrave or tattoo a design, say so in the brief so the stroke weight and size can be planned for it. We cannot check what a third party does with the file after delivery, so keep their final proof on your own checklist.