I'm having extreme trouble with this challenge. I've been trying several different approaches but get stuck on the vowel triplets. The following is what I'm currently working with.

VOWELS = "aeiouy"

def translate(phrase):
    translated = ''
    for letter in phrase:
        if letter not in VOWELS:
            translated += letter
        if letter in VOWELS:
            first = phrase.index(letter)
            end = first + 3
            if letter * 3 == phrase[first:end]:
                translated += letter
            else:
                translated.replace(letter, '')
    return translated

The issue I get is that it either appends every letter to the new string, or it will only append just the consonants. Any hints are appreciated, I've spent about 4 hours on this one challenge. I tried to learn regex for this problem but that ended in a dumpster fire.