Lost in translation

Why do I have a feeling that something similar to what happened to this magazine has happened to a lot of douchebags with Chinese character tattoos?

"The idea was to publish an aesthetic picture illustrating Chinese writing", Max Planck Institute spokeswoman Felicitas von Aretin told AFP Thursday.

The institute bought the picture of Chinese characters in good faith from a photo agency and had it checked by a Chinese speaker, she said.

The collage of texts "looked good and didn't appear to pose a problem", said von Aretin. It was published some five weeks ago on the cover page of one of the institute's journal devoted to China -- "a many-faceted, fascinating land".

Only then did readers notice that the text included a reference to an ad for stripping housewives in a brothel.

They should probably find a different "Chinese speaker" next time. Yeah.