愛 is good for "love". It is read
ai (see
wiki article on Japanese phonology if you're unfamiliar, or there are many other learning sites out there...).
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For "charity", I suggest
慈善 jizen(or perhaps 慈善心
jizenshin, charitable spirit / benevolence).
This is not a word that I knew off the top of my head, but I am not a native speaker, and it is marked as "common"
in EDICT, so I would expect it to be understood.
The two kanji of 慈善 carry the senses of
慈: "affectionate" or "mercy" (this kanji is well-known but only present in
a few words in common use, all of them positive)
善: "(morally) good"
"Jizen" as a reading doesn't seem to imply anything bad either.
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For "esteem"... hm. First I have to understand the English nuance of the word ._. I do mostly encounter it in the phrase "self-esteem". In fact, wikipedia redirects "esteem" to "self-esteem". If you don't think that's the right interpretation, though, Google seems to say that "respect and admiration" is what we're going for here... so perhaps you want the meaning "holding due respect and admiration for others".
In that case I would suggest 尊敬
sonkei or 尊重
sonchou.
It is worth deliberating over the difference between these words.
The common kanji is 尊, carrying the sense of "honor". It is used both in words like 自尊心 (self-respect; pride) as well as 尊ぶ (to revere), so it can be for the self or others.
The difference between the two words can be seen in the last kanji.
敬 carries the meaning "respect for others" and is used in words like 敬老 (respect for the aged), 敬語 (honorific language, language used to respect others), 敬具 (Yours Respectfully), etc.
If you look up 尊敬 on
Space Alc, which lists "esteem" as one of the meanings, and page through the examples, you'll see that they involve holding other people in esteem. You cannot generally 尊敬 yourself, or at least, most people would not think this was the intended meaning upon reading 尊敬.
重 is the kanji for "heavy" or "weight" and therefore 尊重 is neutral in meaning. You could say it means "value highly".
Here's the Space Alc definitions. You'll find that 尊重 can apply to
the self, or
to others, and often is applied to abstract concepts -- so if you are talking about holding values, or opinions, or ideas in esteem, you use 尊重.
These are both very common words and would be instantly recognized whichever you went for. They are the most common words for their pronunciation too so there's nothing to worry about there.
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I would make a point about presentation... If they're all going to be in a single column, make sure they don't run too close together. Either insert a separator dot ・ between them (in the center of the column, with a moderate amount of space between the kanji above and below it) or leave a fullwidth space (that is a space that's the same size as the kanji).
I would suggest finding a tattooist who knows Japanese to do the tattoo (well, you know the pronunciations, so this should be easy to check...). It is very easy to draw kanji in such a way that the proportions look completely wrong to a native eye if you are not familiar with the language, and naturally fonts don't look great either (consider tattoos done in Times New Roman or Arial).
Finally, a disclaimer - I am not a native speaker and although I've done this with the best of intentions and careful research, I take no responsibility if there is any hidden meaning that I am somehow ignorant of, or if there are more appropriate words etc... I doubt there are any problems with these but I would run them by a native speaker to be sure. They say you should always translate into your native language, and I normally focus on Japanese to English translation, but I couldn't pass up the chance for more bitcoins, haha.
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