Translation help, please!

[Flyguy]

Does anyone have a good translation for this:  らめらめっ. It's spoken and I assume that it's some kind of epithet. English translators come up with Ramerame. Thanks

[Dergonu]

 

[melo4496]

I think らめ is 駄目

[Nosebleed]

Any context? There's really not much to go on here...

[TastefulSardine]

Sounds like maybe damedame? Like no, no in a cutesy way.  Really need more context

[Flyguy]

7 minutes ago, TastefulSardine said:

Sounds like maybe damedame? Like no, no in a cutesy way.  Really need more context

It could be. Damedame would fit in the story context as the girl is protesting the lewd sounds that she's hearing. 

[Nosebleed]

Just now, Flyguy said:

It could be. Damedame would fit in the story context as the girl is protesting the lewd sounds that she's hearing. 

Then it's almost certainly "dame dame". This usually happens when the character is in a lewd situation and can't pronounce words properly.

[ittaku]

Nosebleed is spot on. It's common for heroines in the heat of passion to not be able to pronounce words correctly, softening the consonant component of d to r. ramerame is just damedame.  There are also plenty of H scenes where they have to speak with their mouths full (use your imagination) and they're able to pronounce even less sounds correct

[Fred the Barber]

A common recommendation for translating such scenes is to take whatever you've written as an initial translation and then say it out loud it after putting something in your mouth (fingers are a common recommendation, but you do what you gotta do) and then transcribe that sound to get the same effect. That said, "shtahf" is probably what I'd end up with for "stop", and is probably going to be completely indecipherable, and that kinda matches my usual experience whenever I've tried to do this. So I tend to just leave whatever the original translator thought was best, which is typically a straightforward translation of the actual word, not some garbled phonetical transcription of the translation.

I think that original recommendation is probably only good if you're transcribing, and is not a good idea if you're translating; it may work fine for the original JP transcription to do the more phonetically-correct thing, but an English reader is lacking the additional vocal clues, and therefore is going to just be confused by it. Heck, clearly the JP-savvy people here were pretty confused with the JP transcription and no vocal clues, but I bet they would have had no initial confusion if they'd heard a sound clip.

[Flyguy]

Thanks, everyone for your help. I'm just trying to make sense of a VN using several different machine translators and dictionaries. Unfortunately, I don't read or speak Japanese. However, I am picking up bits and pieces as I go along.

[ittaku]

53 minutes ago, Flyguy said:

Thanks, everyone for your help. I'm just trying to make sense of a VN using several different machine translators and dictionaries. Unfortunately, I don't read or speak Japanese. However, I am picking up bits and pieces as I go along.

This is an exercise in futility. Machine translators are there to aid people who already know some Japanese. Knowing no Japanese the machine only serves to spew out meaningless gibberish. Where's that clock picture... someone's bound to post it shortly.

[Chronopolis]

4 hours ago, ittaku said:

This is an exercise in futility. Machine translators are there to aid people who already know some Japanese. Knowing no Japanese the machine only serves to spew out meaningless gibberish. Where's that clock picture... someone's bound to post it shortly.

Lol. I find machine translations are the "better than nothing" tool that people can use if they don't want to go through learning Japanese and just want to get some gist of what is being said.

If you know basic Japanese use ITH and Translation Aggregator for christ's sake.

[Darklord Rooke]

6 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

A common recommendation for translating such scenes is to take whatever you've written as an initial translation and then say it out loud it after putting something in your mouth (fingers are a common recommendation, but you do what you gotta do) and then transcribe that sound to get the same effect. That said, "shtahf" is probably what I'd end up with for "stop", and is probably going to be completely indecipherable, and that kinda matches my usual experience whenever I've tried to do this. So I tend to just leave whatever the original translator thought was best, which is typically a straightforward translation of the actual word, not some garbled phonetical transcription of the translation.

You're right. Probably a recommendation only for transcribing.

It goes against the modern advice given for writing such scenes, and I don't believe it should be the recommendation for translating such scenes either (with one exception related to stylistic accuracy which I'll list below.) The common recommendation for writing weird accents (and talking with your mouth full qualifies) is less is more. In other words, include enough written clues to get the concept of 'something in her mouth' across without actually mimicking what it sounds like. Dialogue 'imitates' real life, it doesn't copy it. There are exceptions to the rule, but those are the common guidelines.

The reason this is recommended, is because if you accurately write down what it sounds like when people talk with something in their mouth, then you're quite right the reader will have trouble reading it. Anything which jerks the reader out of the reading experience is considered dangerous, and that includes writing sentences full of 'shtahf' instead of 'stop'. Writing is different to voice acting, in voice acting they may strive for 'realism' but that doesn't come across well in the writing world.

For example, with Diana Gabaldon's Outlander the Scottish accents are delightfully understated:

Quote

“Our meeting was necessarily rather brief,” the Scot said dryly. “But memorable.” He picked up his glass and took a drink, watching Grey across the crystal rim. “Perhaps ye didna know that I had met Lord Melton, on Culloden Field?” 

... “No,” he said softly. He smiled with humour. “Your brother verra stubbornly refused to shoot me. I wasna inclined to be grateful for the favour at the time.”

... “Did ye no hear the English troops passing in the night at the quick-march? D’ye think it will be hard for them to hunt down our ragtag lot?”

However, back in the 19th Century it was the vogue to accurately replicate every phonetic difference in accents and everything else. So you got bullshit like this:

Quote

Oh, Huck, I bust out a-cryin’ en grab her up in my arms, en say, ‘Oh, de po’ little thing! De Lord God Amighty fogive po’ ole Jim, kaze he never gwyne to fogive hisself as long’s he live!’ Oh, she was plumb deef en dumb, Huck, plumb deef en dumb—en I’d ben atreat’n her so! 

...S’pose we must be resigned; but oh Lord! how ken I? If I know’d anything whar you’s goin’, or how they’d sarve you! Missis says she’ll try and ’deem ye, in a year or two; but Lor! nobody never comes up that goes down thar! They kills ’em! I’ve hearn ’em tell how dey works ’em up on dem ar plantations.

Writers don't often do that any more, writing's changed in the past 150 years. In fact, phonetically replicating accents (stuff down throat qualifies) is often on the list of writing 'do nots': http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/most-common-mistakes-dos-and-donts-of/

I really wouldn't recommend translators or editors stick something down their throat and try and phonetically replicate shit. Unless that's what they did in the Japanese and you want a super accurate representation, at which point I'd roll my eyes at the original H-scene writing.

[ittaku]

3 hours ago, Rooke said:

I really wouldn't recommend translators or editors stick something down their throat and try and phonetically replicate shit. Unless that's what they did in the Japanese and you want a super accurate representation, at which point I'd roll my eyes at the original H-scene writing.

Hmm.. I know enough Japanese to confidently say - if you knew Japanese, you'd roll your eyes at 99.9% of H scenes in Japanese. What they have in their favour is the audio; one can easily make out what they're saying in Japanese and when I'm translating those scenes I have to listen to try and figure out what they're saying since the written word means very little most of the time on its own. All in all this means that the localisation must go to more effort to make what's written understandable in its own right (as mentioned above). Making it obvious that they're speaking with their mouth full, or with an accent, or they're stuttering, or delirious when they speak is important, but without audio cues, it also has to still be understandable through reading the text alone.