I need a help with tattoo translation

Hello, I've come with the idea of having tattoo with Japanese letters, but there are so many cases of ridiculous words on people. I want to write "freedom" word, so it would be great to be sure that it is written right. After some researches I found that "freedom" is 自由 in Japanese. Am I right? Please let me know.

So many cases of people getting bad tattoos? Like a non-Japanese person getting a Japanese tattoo?....

Yes, you are right. It means "freedom", it is written right, and it looks ridiculous.

Please feel free to give us an example of a case of not ridiculous words on people.

Not a Japanese here, but the first thing I think of when hearing 自由 is something like “ please don’t hesitate. Have a look at everything in this shop”. Or “ please feel free to take more xyz (eg cake…)”

I wouldn’t think of FREEDOM in the philosophical sense.

Plus frankly I don’t think that the kanji of 自由 looks nice. Very squared and a bit simple. Maybe if you get like a really artistic calligraphy done for it, it can look nice. But just like this it’s just a bunch of square lines.

I agree with LikeBike. Yes, 自由 does mean "freedom" in the broad sense, but if I saw someone with it as tattoo, my first mental image would be of "feel free to" rather than "I am/people should be free to live as they want."

In general I think that to Japanese people (and also people who are used to using the Japanese language in their daily lives), when they see a kanji tattoo their immediate reaction is less "That's a declaration of a concept that's important to the person" and more "That's a label" or "That's a reminder that the thing exists." So again, if I saw someone with a tattoo of 自由, I think my reaction wouldn't be "That person is living their life freely" so much as "Why is this person saying 'People are free to do what they want with me?'" or "Does that mean we're arrowed to write freely on this person?"

As for why Japanese/Japanese-reading people are likely to react that way, I think it's largely a side effect of Japanese cultural behavior. Visually broadcasting your life philosophy to strangers isn't something that's commonly done in Japan, so tattoos and T-shirts, feel less like statements and more like random thoughts. It'd be sort of like if I was in America and saw someone with a tattoo that said "Pancakes." My reaction would be "Yeah...but what about pancakes?", and I think you'd get a similar reaction from people in Japan for a 自由 tattoo.

The translation is correct, but it looks kind of strange if you were to turn that into a tattoo. I really don't get why people think by tattooing kanji on their body is cool. Sometimes Kanji can have multiple meanings or it depends on the context of how it's used.

Just please be careful of what you put PERMANENTLY on your body, as it may seem "cool" to you, but others might look at it oddly, especially in Japan if you're planning on getting a tattoo and coming to Japan since there are still places that don't allow tattoos.

It's your life and you do you, but just remember that some things do have negative consequences of how others may perceive you.

Well, being a professional Japanese translator and resident, I would never interpret it as "free to take whatnot". I'm even surprised that some residents do. I may, instead, think that the tattoo wearer wants to say that him/herself is a free person. If I hear that (s)he wanted to say "freedom" (which I think is not exactly the same thing as being a free person yourself), I'd think it makes sense too.

Regardless, it would look like one of those dumb tattoos by a person who is not from Japanese culture. And the font presented here is, of course, really dumb-looking as a tattoo, but that wasn't part of the question.