For a good time call your bank manager

boingboing.net reported today that a well-known German financial magazine, MaxPlanckForshung Journal, ran an ad for a Chinese whore-house on the cover of their publication. Apparently they needed Chinese characters to grace the cover of their mag, and thought they were printing a lovely Chinese poem.

The Independent reported that a German Chinese translator was used, and since there are many words in the Chinese language that mean different things depending on how you say them, it was nearly impossible for a non-native speaker to know what the text was actually saying. The article then goes on to describe a few instances wherein drunken Americans have received tattoos in Chinese that mean completely different things than what they think.

Here's the original article in The Independent.
Here's the posting from boingboing.net.

The lesson: If you don't know what it says, make damn sure that you trust the translator completely, or you might end up with a tattoo that says "prostitute."