Unofficial translations are estimated to charge Japanese publishers up to $5 billion a year, and they also hurt manga authors who collect their royalties. Pirates take advantage of the delay in translating works to speed up their online versions before authorized versions can arrive. Published.
Demand for translations now exceeds supply. At the New York branch of the Japanese bookstore Kinokuniya, manga enthusiasts scour the shelves in search of the latest additions to their collections.
But only a fraction of Japanese manga titles are translated. The store has a sign informing consumers about mangas that have not yet been published in English.
Nagai Yasunobu, director of Kinokuniya New York, says the manga’s popularity is booming. If this continues, it will be crucial, he says, to translate more work.
Mantra, a Tokyo-based startup launched in 2020, hopes to replace that. Developed an artificial intelligence formula that specializes in multilingual manga translations.
The company works to help publishers publish their comics faster to meet foreign demand. Its engine scans the virtual edition of the original, the Japanese of the bubbles, and enters the translated text in minutes. The only thing left is for the designers and editors to fine-tune everything.
“Sometimes we have to adjust the arrangement of words to be compatible in the bubble, to make them less difficult to read,” says a design designer at the company.
With this system, an entire manga that takes a month or more to translate can be finished in just two days.
Mantra co-founder and CEO Ishiwatari Shonosuke hopes to push its features even further.
He says, “In the future, we hope to be able to get the multi-language manga into the hands of readers in real-time. This is ultimately what we are looking for. »
For now, the AI tool is still learning. Has difficulty identifying and adding topic words such as “I,” “you,” “he,” and “she,” which are commonly omitted in the original Japanese.
Japan’s most productive manga is known for its unique phraseology and nuanced language, which can make translation difficult. Mantra employs human translators to ensure accuracy.
Akihabara, Tokyo, is the center of the manga and anime world. Many foreign visitors pass through there hoping to find books in their local language, but they have to rely on their smartphones’ artificial intelligence to translate.
A young fan from the United States says he buys Japanese editions and reads them with his smartphone. But he believes that a lot is lost this way.
He says he would enjoy those stories more if he could read the English versions of the “rather poor translation” on his phone.
It’s not just English speakers who are frustrated. A young Taiwanese manga fan says only the most notable works are translated into Mandarin. He says he wishes there was also more specialized content in his language.
Mantra’s Ishiwatari comes from a multicultural background, born to a Japanese father and Chinese mother, so he believes that translating more manga into Mandarin is rarely just about profits. He says that exposing more Chinese to manga will lead to greater respect for Japanese culture and gender, bringing the two countries closer to their parents.
According to experts, speeding up translations would help combat the challenge of piracy.
Hirai Yuki, a lawyer at the Sakurazaka law firm who has worked on piracy cases, says that temporarily putting official versions online in many languages would point to illicit sites.
He says readers will look for everything that’s available, so publishers “should remove this by publishing as many original editions as possible. “
The Mantra formula can now translate manga into 18 languages. Other companies, in addition to the publishers themselves, also use tactics in which AI can speed up the translation process.
Cost is another main reason why some people turn to pirated versions, while trying to keep up with publishing content. As AI reduces the costs of the hard work required for translation, many consumers expect it to help reduce manga costs.
The Japanese government is among those hoping manga’s popularity will continue. His so-called “Cool Japan” crusade to publicize the country’s comfortable strength aims to boost exports of manga, anime and other entertainment to generate around $125 billion through 2033.
But not everyone believes that AI is in a position to play a central role in the manga boom. Kamimura Saki, president of the Japan Translators Association, says he doubts AI is up to the task of capturing one’s unique attributes well. work.
Kamimura says his organization is necessarily opposed to the use of AI, but he says it has its limitations.
“We have reservations about their ability to ensure quality. We have seen how all piracy sites use AI in their translations. If Japan starts doing the same, we wonder how publishers can achieve a higher quality point than piracy sites. piracy,” he says.
Lawyer Hirai envisions a future in which translators use the new generation as a kind of co-pilot.
He says: “Ideally, translators would use AI as a tool, a partnership between man and machine. In this way, enthusiasts will not only have to highlight titles, but also specialized titles. “
Creators would have a fancy channel to keep providing new content. Hirai believes that it is important to “create such an ecosystem, in which everyone wins. “How glorious a global that would be. “