News recently broke out that major Japanese manga publisher Shogakukan, along with several other public and private companies, invested 2.92 billion yen (about $19.5 million) in the company. localization of Orange Inc. comics.
The ideology behind the investment is to promote manga exports abroad using AI translation as it will reduce the time it takes to translate these works.
The anime and manga industry has watched with a mix of curiosity and apprehension as AI has rapidly matured.
While AI's potential to streamline workflows and reduce production costs is undeniable and is even favored by those looking to increase productivity, there are still concerns about the impact. Its to the creators who have devoted their careers to this field.
Against this backdrop, Japan is championing comic AI translations that have the potential to reshape the entire manga industry. Unsurprisingly, comic book translators and lettering artists abroad greeted the news with a healthy dose of skepticism.
The general consensus is that AI translations will not be able to capture the nuances of the original Japanese text, potentially reducing the nuances of the original Japanese text. reading experience for international fans and ultimately kills the enjoyment of the manga genre.
What confuses me is that investors don't understand if pirates can get away with translating manga using AI and MT, they should have done it already. Fan translations are still done the traditional way for a reason. Stop pumping money into these initiatives. They will fail. https://t.co/er22crS1EW
— Luis Alis・ルイス (@LuisAlisFerrer) May 7, 2024
Orange Inc. cites the slow pace of human translation and difficulty in finding qualified translators as key factors in the push for AI translations. They claim that this will solve the bottleneck of limited translated content for overseas manga fans.
However, many people have pointed out that investing large sums of money in AI translation instead of hiring more translators and paying them fairly is not a wise move.
In fact, if translators were paid fairly for the work they do, it would become a more lucrative career path for many.
It will also allow many translators to quit their day jobs and focus entirely on their translation work.
Both translators and lettering artists, including Brandon Bovia, were stunned by this fact that companies were willing to invest $19.5 million in a manga localization company, while the price of translation more than 1 USD per page is considered “expensive” for human resources.
19.5 million USD. I can't get over that. Rates are falling thanks to low-cost agents and many people can't afford to do this full-time as they are now.
$19.5 million.
— Brandon Bovia (@brandonbovia) May 7, 2024
Japanese publishers throw $20 million USD at some AI junk tech startups that probably won't even be viable to publish, while more than $1/page is “too expensive”. https://t.co/M9RcnAmPDq
— Dobu (dobu.bsky.social) (@Dobu_Dobu ) May 6, 2024
Jan Cash, who is known for his translations Choujin X, Burn The Witches and the manga's latest oneshot Bleach pointed out that the money raised in the endowment could have been used to pay a reasonable price for at least 10,000 books.
The market price is $5~$6/page for translation, let's say $6/page for basic writing
$19.5 million USD could pay for the translation and lettering of 1,625,000 pages
That's about 10,000 books they could pay a reasonable price for https://t.co/WfFync8HRT— Jan Mitsuko Cash ???? ジェン・光子・キャッシュ (@Jmitsu) May 7, 2024
This isn't the first time AI or machine translation has been tested for manga, and the results weren't very satisfactory to me.
But the even more serious problem is that using AI for translation means that translators currently operating behind the scenes will have to work harder and get paid less.
The problem lies in the way the entire AI translation process takes place.
As many translators have pointed out, AI-powered translations still need to be proofread and edited for translators to correct and localize.
This work has been described as more labor-intensive than translating a manga from scratch.
To those who comment that they will have humans “proofread and check” the translations — just know that these translations always end up having to be redone from scratch because they are so messy.
This is used to justify paying translators less 1/https://t.co/ROBtXkJhQp
— ????ACEN????????????????????????ファティーマ????Fatimah (@saffronapplepie) May 7, 2024
On top of that, the Proofreading Rate the translator receives is much lower than translating a manga series entirely. So basically, AI translations essentially mean that translators will get paid less for more work.
This is not appropriate for those working in the industry. And of course, the move to translate AI has received a lot of backlash.
While the backlash from Orange Inc and Shogakukan among others is reasonable based on past experiences, the localization company claims to develop advanced technology to localize manga by Use deep learning.
However, even with highly developed AI models, translators are not completely out of the game when it comes to proofreading and localization, and their concerns about fair pay remain intact. .