Just need a little help from a Japanese speaker here. I want to change my signature to something I heard at Animaritime, specifially abou the meaning of the acronym yaoi. I remember the meaning but knowing very little of the language I can’t remember the wording.
Anways, the phrase is “Yaoi stands for ‘no climax, no point, no meaning’, NOT ‘Stop! My butt hurts!’”
I know that ‘stop my butt hurts’ is something along the lines of ‘yamete oshite itai’ but I’m completely stumped on the first part.
For the second part, “butt” is oshiri, so I think it should be Yamete! Oshiri itai! What you have there could be translated as “Stop! Pushing hurts!” which conveys pretty much the same meaning.
For the first, well, I’m not sure I can help much with that, but I’ll try.
“Climax” could be translated as yamaba, but that’s just pulled from a dictionary. I have no idea how appropriate or commonplace a word that is, or even if it’s the right type of climax.
“Point”. I can’t find anything that translates as point that also begins with an O.
“Meaning” would be imi.
How to put them all together? I don’t think I trust my Japanese skills well enough to give you a signature that’s not embarrassingly inaccurate.
The question was strict translation, but thanks, the Wiki entry does help (yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi). I already knew what yaoi is–with the friends I have, I’d have to be stupid not to.
Well, I am a native speaker but this one’s difficult - the translation would depend on who’s saying “ouch, my butt hurts” and in what context (polite, aggressive, submissive, etc). I’ll wait and see if someone comes along who’s more familiar with Yaoi before giving it a try.
Also, is your intention to post the quote in Japanese or roma-ji, and is it aimed towards Japanese speakers? I can tell you right away that very few people would bother to read a roma-ji signature. It’s a pain to read even for bilingual people and Japanese speakers.
I was thinking roma-ji, just to avoid having to figure out how to get the kanji or katakana/hiragana (I can’t never remember which is used for native words), although posting the translation as well is a thought. As for who it’s aimed for–I dunno. Myself mainly, I like the quote (there was a yuri/yaoi panel at the con, it was a total hoot).
Didn’t realise that roma-ji was difficult to read–why is that? Given that, I’ll probably try to put it in Japanese, possibly with translations.
Kanji/hiragana are used for native words (hiragana can be used by itself, but kanji sentences almost always contain hiragana as well).
Romaji is often used for effect more than meaning. The oft-lampooned “Engrish” found on Japanese products is rarely meant to convey any information to consumers. Japanese readers consequently often don’t take the time to puzzle out romaji words, even if the words represented are Japanese.
However, I really just wanted to post to say that I’m now disappointed that neither scr4 nor Sublight have ever weighed in on such topics IRL, even after several drinks. I’ll know what to expect in future, though.
Japanese has a lot of homonyms, and there is no clear separation between words. So it’s difficult to read a purely phonetic representation of a sentence and understand it. It’s not much better if a sentence is written purely in hiragana. Kanji may be complex, but each word represents a concept or meaning, so it’s easy to skim over and get the gist of the sentence.
It’s grammatically correct.
At this point I realize this computer I’m on doesn’t have a Japanese input method. I guess I’d translate the OP’s sentence in roma-ji as:
“Yaoi” wa “yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi” no ryaku desu. “yamete, oshiri ga itai” to iu imi dewa arimasen.
Anyways, I think I’m gonna skip the Japanese characters. If it’s aimed at people like me, then there’s no point in having a signature that I can’t read myself. I’ll stick to romaji with translations.
Oh, so now the truth of where you were last Friday comes out. Ya missed a doozy, btw. Half price bottles for 08:30’s third anniversary. And a gaggle of 20-something girls with us until 6:45 AM.