A Japanese startup said Tuesday it aims to use artificial intelligence to help translate manga comics into English five times faster and 90% cheaper than at present.

Manga series such as “One Piece” and “Dragon Ball” are a huge success story for Japan, with the market projected to be worth $42.2 billion by 2030, according to the startup, Orange.

But it said only about 2% of Japan’s annual output of 700,000 manga volumes are released in English, “partly due to the difficult and lengthy translation process and the limited number of translators.”

But with its technology, Orange aims to produce 500 English-language manga per month, five times more than the industry’s current capacity, and 50,000 volumes in five years. Other languages will come later.

“Compared to translation of a book, translating Japanese used in manga, which uses very short sentences of conversational language often full of slang, is extremely difficult,” said Orange’s marketing vice president Tatsuhiro Sato.

Source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/theme_japantimes/images/logo.svg

Full article: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2024/05/08/companies/startup-to-use-ai-to-translate-manga/