Who's confusing who?

[adrianlondon]

According to this BBC news clip, a woman "accidentally" got the Chinese word "supermarket" tattooed on her body instead of her now ex-boyfriend's nickname.

However, it doesn't mean supermarket as far as I can tell. Could it be a non-Mandarin dialect or is it just a catalog of rubbish translations?

BBC video ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/player/nol/newsid_7130000/newsid_7139400?redirect=7139478.stm&news=1&bbwm=1&bbram=1&nbram=1&nbwm=1

The three characters are 盟联行.

[trien27]

She should have went to http://www.hanzismatter.com before tattooing anything in a foreign language on her body, especially Chinese or Japanese. And yes, 盟联行 doesn't mean "Supermarket". Just thinking it's cool to tattoo something you don't even understand on your body is a shame. You're correct: It doesn't mean anything.

盟联 makes no sense in Chinese, but

联盟 = a group's commitment to the accomplishment of a mission.

行

as a verb "xing" means "to walk", OK,

as a noun "hang" could mean "profession", "jewelry store"; "lines" as in "lines of poetry"; a row [of something].

[adrianlondon]

I hoped the BBC would have at least checked the translation before basically making up a story about a bad translation. I guess not.

[muyongshi]

They might have thought that the 联行 referred to a 连锁 type of market. Maybe. Even more accurate would be to say its the name of a bank card :mrgree