I am designing a tshirt with a friend and we wanted to put some japanese on it. Since my japanese is extremely basic (こんにちは、ミカです) I wanted to ask whether the symbols DeepL gave us mean what we think it means. We want to have a skeleton inside a water bottle and the text should read “stay hydrated” and we got these symbols: 水分補給. Do they work in that context? Or are there any better suggestions we could use? Thanks in advance!

  • Nihongo@lemmy.world
    3·
    7 months ago

    I’d suggest asking on hinative.com, since you can ask a native speaker there.

    水分補強 sounds like “water rations” or something to me (dictionary). It’s just the nouns and doesn’t imply “stay hydrated!” to me, personally - like writing “Hydration” on a bottle.

    Offhand, I’d suggest asking a native speaker about some of these:

    1. 熱中症にご注意！ “Be careful of heatstroke!” (commonly said phrase to imply “drink water” and cool off, probably fits with skeleton best I think? Unless it’s winter, definitely more common in summer)
    2. 水分を忘れないでね！ “Don’t forget to hydrate!” (I need to ask a native speaker if the “ne” makes it sound feminine though)
    3. グイグイ飲もう！ “Let’s drink lots!” (Might imply alcohol, but that might be funnier? or ぐいぐい)
    4. のんで、のんで、のんでのんで、のんで 、のんで、のんでのんで、のんで ! “Drink!” x10 (Might also have alcoholic connotations - like “Chug chug chug!”)
    5. 水分補給しよう！ “Let’s hydrate!” (Or しましょう which is formal/polite)

    I think the first two work best with a skeleton. Maybe 2 is clearest.

    Not sure what other ideas people might have - also note that I’m NOT a native Japanese speaker. Just throwing out some ideas!