A start-up wants to speed up manga translation using AI

Japanese start-up Orange Inc. said on Tuesday it plans to drastically accelerate the translation of manga using artificial intelligence (AI), primarily to increase the supply available in English and also to try to counter pirated translations. Translating manga is currently a long and difficult process for multiple reasons, including the specificities of the Japanese language in these comics and the limited number of professional translators compared to a plentiful supply. The total number of manga officially available in English, for example, currently reaches 14,000 volumes per year, or only 2% of the volumes published each year in Japan, according to Orange.

This Tokyo company founded in 2021 announced on Tuesday that it had completed a fundraising of 2.9 million yen (around 17.5 million euros) to develop its translation support tool based on models “deep learning» (machine learning mode based on an artificial neural network). This round of financing should also allow it to launch an online manga store this summer in the United States, its priority market. Orange, which works hand in hand with the manga industry Shogakukan, one of the major publishers in the sector, is one of its financiers and estimates that its tool will make it possible to translate 500 volumes into English this year. months, or 5 times more than the current translation capacity without AI assistance.

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France the second country of manga

“We will focus on English and the United States first. In the future we want to translate into other foreign languages, but we have no concrete plans at the moment» on this, specified Tatsuhiro Sato, vice-president of marketing at Orange Inc. After Japan, France is the second manga country, a universe of great diversity with numerous mega-franchises like “One Piece“, “Dragon Ball» or even “Naruto”. Its variations in other media (animated series or live-action films, video games, etc.) further strengthen its popularity.

The global market in the sector has grown significantly in recent years and is expected to represent more than $42 billion in 2030, an average annual growth rate of 18%, according to a recent study by the analysis firm Grand View Research. The other side of the coin is that the global market for pirated manga is also flourishing: it will be worth $5.5 billion in 2022, according to CODA, the Japanese association of distributors of Japanese cultural content abroad (mangas, anime, music). and video games, etc.).