celebrity

Ariana Grande has had an unfortunate tattoo fail. These 8 others are just as bad.

Like so many others before her, Ariana Grande has become the victim of a translation error when getting a tattoo in a foreign language.

The pop superstar shared a picture on Twitter and Instagram of her new tattoo, a set of Japanese characters that was supposed to read “seven rings” after her new song, on the palm of her hand.

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Ariana Grande posted the photo of her palm to Instagram and Twitter, and fans quickly spotted an issue. Image: Twitter.

But Japanese fans quickly realised the phrase actually translated to the Japanese word 'shichirin', a 'small charcoal grill'. Basically, a tiny barbecue.

Perhaps a little embarrassed, the 25-year-old deleted the photo from her Instagram, though it remains on her Japanese Twitter account.

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However, in a since-deleted tweet, Ariana wrote that she had left out the rest of the characters which would have spelled the words correctly because "it hurt like f***" and she "wouldn’t have lasted another symbol".

The thank u, next singer also told followers that she wasn't too worried about the mistake, as the tattoo wouldn't be as permanent as it would be in many other places. Also, she likes barbecues.

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"This spot also peels a ton and won’t last, so if I miss it enough, I’ll suffer thru the whole thing next time," she said.

And really, why should she be worried? It's not like she'll go down as having the worst tattoo fail.

Foreign translations are tricky. And hell, even people writing in their own native language get it wrong far, far too often.

(Like the Swedish mum who changed her toddler son's name to Kelvin after a tattoo artist misspelt Kevin on her arm.)

Here are eight of our favourite tattoo fails from across the internet.

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So... give up? Image: perlgeek.de
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We honestly don't know if English is this man's first language or not. Image: Facebook
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Too late now.
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Except this tattoo, that is. That's a "hing" he might regret.
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"Life" is awesome, yes.
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At least he found a way to... fix it?
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This guy got the same tattoo as his dog:

Image via Facebook.
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The animal-lover thought it was "sickening" that the previous owners had tattooed the dog, and so wanted to get the same one in support of him.

Only, as people on the internet quickly pointed out, the tattoo the dog had was a standard one vets ink in order to signify to future vets that the dog has been neutered.

Even other celebrities aren't immune.

Emma Watson famously wore a grammatically incorrect temporary tattoo to the Oscars in 2018. Instead of the words on her arm reading 'Time's Up' in honour of the equality movement, 'times' was missing the apostrophe.

Emma Watson Oscars tattoo
Image: Getty.
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This is only one of our favourites though, because the actress handled it like a goddamn boss, sending out this tweet in response to the criticism:

Have you had an unfortunate mistake with a tattoo before?