Duolingo Exposes Embarrassing Foreign Tattoos By Translating, Then Fixing Them

Video screenshot via Duolingo

Have no ragrets about the tattoo you had done at the neighborhood parlor during one of your travels? Duolingo may have bad news for you.

For World Tattoo Day on March 21, the language learning app has made it its mission to decipher terrible, mistranslated inks and even give some of them a, well, #DuoOver.

The awkward campaign, produced by advertising agency BETC Paris, brings to light the sort of awful messages people may have unknowingly exhibited to the public. A well-intended “live, laugh, love” in a foreign language, for instance, could really mean “sad, soft, tuna,” while a bold mantra for “courage” might truly be an invocation for a “toilet demon”… not ideal at all. 

If you’ve been getting sniggers from strangers, or if your gut feeling tells you something is wrong with your foreign-language tattoo, you can post a photo of it with the #TattooDuoOver hashtag and tag the Duolingo account on Twitter or Instagram, who’ll get its experts to identify any mistranslations or grammatical issues in there for two weeks, beginning March 21.

Video screenshot via Duolingo

Anyone feeling too embrassed by their body art can instead privately send a picture of it to the dedicated [email protected] email address.

One important way to learn is through corrections, and since you’ve chosen to have the “cultured” text etched into your skin, Duolingo is also arranging limited-time fixes for some of these errors at the Abraxas tattoo parlor in Paris. Inked folks located in the UK and France may apply.

Video screenshot via Duolingo

Video screenshot via Duolingo

Video screenshot via Duolingo

[via Creative Review and Fast Company, video and screenshots via Duolingo]