Can someone help with a tattoo translation?

Just checking to see if this “ 恐れない” really translates to “I’m not afraid”, “No Fear”, or “Undaunted” in English. Any of those translations would work. It’s a simple but an important reminder to have. Thank you.

恐れない translates to "not fearing. " There's no grammatical subject or object included in the phrase, so it doesn't way who isn't afraid, or what they're not afraid of.

You might also be interested to know that tattoos that include the Japanese language's phonetic hiragana text, like the れない portion of 恐れない, will probably look silly to anyone who can read Japanese, and that pretty much any personal philosophy tattoo written in Japanese will look silly to most people who have spent much time living in Japan, regardless of how correct the grammar/vocabulary is.

It honestly depends on the context of what you're talking about. Not afraid of what?

I just have to ask, why do you feel the need to get a tattoo in a language that isn't your own if you don't even understand what you'd be putting onto your body? I really don't understand the fascination with putting words of another language onto your body permanently that only resonates with you. It would also look very, very strange if you are putting something like that on your body, because in Japan, people don't really do that and locals would probably mock the tattoo and find it super strange.

There are many topics that people post about getting tattoos on this forum and I'm really not sure why you'd want to put something permanent onto your body that you don't even understand and need to ask people on a forum. I'm not sure if you plan on coming to Japan, but there are still places that ban people like onsen from having a tattoo.

Just food for thought when you're planning on putting something onto your body that clearly only you understand that others might not think is so cool, but you do you.

Just checking to see if this “ 恐れない” really translates to “I’m not afraid”, “No Fear”, or “Undaunted” in English.

I suppose you can say it does.

Any of those translations would work.

It would? Without context? That's hard to believe. I'm a professional translator, if that helps.

It’s a simple but an important reminder to have.

It is? Even if you're not sure about the translation? That's hard to even imagine.

Can someone help with a tattoo translation?

Not really. A tattoo should be something very important and immortal, and I can't be responsible for it.

Thank you.

You're very welcome, and thank you for trusting random anonymous internet users like us. I'm also happy to know that you seem to have no questions about font. I'm sure you have someone else to double check that.

@Uco
I'm also happy to know that you seem to have no questions about font.


I hope he won't choose gothic typefaces or ming for his tattoo. Those fonts make tattoos in Japanese look to us quite sillier.

Well, almost any computer font would look silly to me as a tattoo, even if it's HGS Gyoshotai.