Orange Introduces Comic Translation Model
Japanese manga, such as “One Piece” and “Dragon Ball,” have achieved tremendous success. According to Grand View Research, the manga market is projected to reach a value of $42.2 billion by 2030. While these comics are also popular overseas, startup Orange states that only 2% of the 700,000 manga volumes produced in Japan each year are translated into English. The slow progress of “Englishizing” Japanese manga is due to a complex workflow that takes about a month to complete.
In an effort to accelerate the time-consuming and labor-intensive translation process, Orange has launched the Factory translation tool, which utilizes AI. This tool reduces translation time by five times and cuts costs by 90%. To fund the project, Orange has already raised 2.92 billion Japanese yen ($60 million).
Translating manga is challenging, and piracy is rampant. The difficulty of translating manga and the high costs involved make it difficult to produce official English translations in large quantities. As a result, pirated translations often circulate in the market before official translations are released.
To address these issues, Orange has developed Factory, a translation tool specifically designed for manga. Using AI image recognition and natural language processing, Orange translates the words in the manga into English. Their specialized model for manga can handle puns and other difficult-to-translate phrases. The AI-translated manga is then reviewed and adjusted by human translators and editors, completing the entire translation process within two days.
In addition to Factory, Orange plans to launch the digital manga store Emaqi in the United States in summer 2024. The app will offer readers manga translated by Orange, along with personalized recommendations and previews of upcoming releases.
If AI-assisted translation and digital distribution become mainstream, manga can be exported immediately after publication in Japan, enabling faster official translations and preventing the circulation of pirated works.
Despite some skepticism from professionals regarding the quality of AI translation and the potential increase in workload for translators, Orange has received substantial investment. They have raised 2.92 billion Japanese yen ($60 million) from nine venture capital groups, including the Japanese publisher Shogakukan and JIC Venture Growth Investments supported by the Japanese government. JIC believes that investing in Orange will strengthen Japan’s industrial competitiveness.
Similar to how Spotify provides music and Netflix offers movies, Orange aims to provide diverse and affordable digital content for readers worldwide. “We want to create a world where everyone loves manga,” says the Orange team.
References:
Orange, The Japan Times, Comics Beat, Nikkei Asia
