On Tuesday, a Japanese startup announced plans to use artificial intelligence to speed up the translation of manga comics into English while significantly reducing costs. The market for mangas in Japan is expected to be worth $42.2 billion by 2030, as reported by Orange Inc., which aims to increase the production of English-language mangas to 500 per month, five times higher than the current industry capacity, with a target of 50,000 volumes in five years before expanding to other languages.
Despite the popularity of mangas in Japan, only two percent of the country’s annual output of 700,000 manga volumes are released in English due to the challenging and time-consuming translation process and a scarcity of translators. Orange’s technology aims to combat these challenges by increasing translation efficiency and producing more English-language mangas.
The complexity of translating Japanese conversational language that often contains slang and short sentences is one unique difficulty that Orange’s marketing vice-president Tatsuhiro Sato highlighted. Additionally, determining whether spoken lines were actually said in a scene or represent internal thoughts can be challenging. Furthermore, the original text being written vertically and conveying Japanese sound effects into English add to the complexity.
Orange secured funding from major publisher Shogakukan and nine venture capital groups, including government-backed JIC Venture Growth Investments. The startup’s AI tool promises not only to increase translation efficiency but also combat piracy in the manga industry, estimated at $5.5 billion annually according to Content Overseas Distribution Association.
