any tips regarding transliterating english words to japanese?

[mykhailoid]

hi! I think all of us ever encountered english words or even sentences in japanese songs. are there any transliterators that can help with - not translating! - converting english words to romaji/hiragana so it will work with japanese voicebanks (or just how to transliterate those words by myself so it will sound correctly)? thanks in advance!

 

[vlbonnie]

Here's a good beginner tutorial for that sort of thing
There's also this on the Vocaloid Wiki https://vocaloid.fandom.com/wiki/English_-_Japanese#Japanese_to_English
A few other things:
-some JP UTAUs may have extras for other languages/have individual quirks that make them easier or harder to use in English. It's a good idea to check the read me, or even scroll through the oto.ini looking for samples--sometimes the results can be surprising!
-Some UTAUs I find using う or w as a substitute for English r (especially with positive gender flags) can sound better than using Japanese r.
-You don't have to put every consonant in there every time. Sing it to yourself/listen to the original and listen to what consonants get "dropped," like the "t" in "want to" getting dropped to make the word "wanna"
-The "er" vowel is a pain in the behind to approximate no matter what and there really is no good solution
Good luck!

 

[mykhailoid]

Here's a good beginner tutorial for that sort of thing
There's also this on the Vocaloid Wiki https://vocaloid.fandom.com/wiki/English_-_Japanese#Japanese_to_English
A few other things:
-some JP UTAUs may have extras for other languages/have individual quirks that make them easier or harder to use in English. It's a good idea to check the read me, or even scroll through the oto.ini looking for samples--sometimes the results can be surprising!
-Some UTAUs I find using う or w as a substitute for English r (especially with positive gender flags) can sound better than using Japanese r.
-You don't have to put every consonant in there every time. Sing it to yourself/listen to the original and listen to what consonants get "dropped," like the "t" in "want to" getting dropped to make the word "wanna"
-The "er" vowel is a pain in the behind to approximate no matter what and there really is no good solution
Good luck!

thank you so much! trying to transliterate "our stories" is truly a pain..

 

[Kiyoteru]

Assuming from your other threads that you're using OpenUtau, you can also set the track's phonemizer to "EN to JA". This will allow you to type plain English words into the notes, and it'll be adapted to Japanese phonemes matching the format of the voicebank (whether CV, VCV, or CVVC). If the voicebank has extra samples, you'll still have to adjust the aliases manually by double clicking on the text in the envelope view.

 

[mykhailoid]

Assuming from your other threads that you're using OpenUtau, you can also set the track's phonemizer to "EN to JA". This will allow you to type plain English words into the notes, and it'll be adapted to Japanese phonemes matching the format of the voicebank (whether CV, VCV, or CVVC). If the voicebank has extra samples, you'll still have to adjust the aliases manually by double clicking on the text in the envelope view.

omg, never thought it's that easy, thank you! but seems like I need to move those words to a whole new track? since all other notes (including japanese) are going to be read like english ones

 

[Kiyoteru]

Yep, you can put the English words on another track and set the phonemizer there.