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In translation communities the idea of using automated translation even in part in the process of translating manga is frowned upon (good luck if you try to get

In translation communities the idea of using automated translation even in part in the process of translating manga is frowned upon (good luck if you try to get away with doing this on a paid gig), and even the people pirating manga on websites tend to actively dislike automated translation as well. Heroic efforts from an excellent machine translation stack and a team of quality checkers and editors can help clean it up, but at the end of the day you'd probably save time and money by just hiring someone fluent in both languages. It's always interesting to see research perspectives on this. I think there's considerable room for improvement, especially given that current translation tech doesn't take into account things like panel layout, horizontal/vertical layout of text, different typeface use, hand-written vs. typeset text, and mixed katakana/hiragana/kanji usage - all things that an author may use to convey tone, implicitly identify the speaker, or add subtext. There are also things with no equivalent in English literature/comics whatsoever, like using furigana to attach a second reading (or dual meaning) to a word. I can imagine some of this info eventually being pulled in by built-for-purpose MTL tools if a research group puts in the time and energy to do it - the paper appears to be a couple brief steps in that direction because they're feeding in basic information about panel layout and the genders of the people in the panels, but little else. Excited to see what happens in this space even if the idea of even more people trying to translate dense comic prose with Google Translate fills me with dread. EDIT: I should have done more research before posting this... digging into the authors of this paper, two of them are working at a company that is trying to sell this current technology to authors right now despite the fact that it is not adequate for the challenges of translating comics to other languages. How depressing.

AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
> It's always interesting to see research perspectives on this. I think there's considerable room for improvement, especially given that current translation tech doesn't take into account things like panel layout, horizontal/vertical layout of text, different typeface use, hand-written vs. typeset text, and mixed katakana/hiragana/kanji usage - all things that an author may use to convey tone, implicitly identify the speaker, or add subtext. There are also things with no equivalent in English literature/comics whatsoever, like using furigana to attach a second reading (or dual meaning) to a word. I also can't imagine how it would deal with the idiosyncratic, occasional-nonsensical English that some manga-ka's like to sneak into their work: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Leelb4eEGz0/UzALTIDcgvI/AAAAAAAAEXU/BJbqwuLyXuU/s1600/HAIL2U!.png http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Leelb4eEGz0/UzALTIDcgvI/AAAAAAAAEX...
lmm 6y ago
> In translation communities the idea of using automated translation even in part in the process of translating manga is frowned upon (good luck if you try to get away with doing this on a paid gig) Plenty of paid translation jobs nowadays explicitly hire people to clean up machine translation rather than translate from scratch.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  That's doing the job you were paid to do. Being hired to translate something properly from scratch and turning in edited Google Translate output is dishonest at a minimum.
  - lmm 6y ago
    > That's doing the job you were paid to do. Sure. My point is that it's far from being a taboo practice in the professional translation world. It's a normal practice that is part of a lot of professional workflows.
chrisvasselli 6y ago
I added OCR into my Japanese dictionary app Nihongo recently, with manga as one of the key use cases I was thinking about. I came up with an interface I don't feel like I've seen elsewhere, where you just tap on words to look them up, so it doesn't get in the way when you're trying to read. I'd be super curious if you think this could be a useful tool for translators. Here's a demo video if you want to see what I'm talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffRxPyc9K8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffRxPyc9K8A
- hiccuphippo 6y ago
  Can you use a list of files in a folder, or zip file instead of using the camera? Plenty of artists sell their manga in patreon-style websites and I would like to read them.

AdmiralAsshat 6y ago

> It's always interesting to see research perspectives on this. I think there's considerable room for improvement, especially given that current translation tech doesn't take into account things like panel layout, horizontal/vertical layout of text, different typeface use, hand-written vs. typeset text, and mixed katakana/hiragana/kanji usage - all things that an author may use to convey tone, implicitly identify the speaker, or add subtext. There are also things with no equivalent in English literature/comics whatsoever, like using furigana to attach a second reading (or dual meaning) to a word. I also can't imagine how it would deal with the idiosyncratic, occasional-nonsensical English that some manga-ka's like to sneak into their work: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Leelb4eEGz0/UzALTIDcgvI/AAAAAAAAEXU/BJbqwuLyXuU/s1600/HAIL2U!.png http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Leelb4eEGz0/UzALTIDcgvI/AAAAAAAAEX...

lmm 6y ago

> In translation communities the idea of using automated translation even in part in the process of translating manga is frowned upon (good luck if you try to get away with doing this on a paid gig) Plenty of paid translation jobs nowadays explicitly hire people to clean up machine translation rather than translate from scratch.

kevingadd 6y ago
That's doing the job you were paid to do. Being hired to translate something properly from scratch and turning in edited Google Translate output is dishonest at a minimum.
- lmm 6y ago
  > That's doing the job you were paid to do. Sure. My point is that it's far from being a taboo practice in the professional translation world. It's a normal practice that is part of a lot of professional workflows.

chrisvasselli 6y ago

I added OCR into my Japanese dictionary app Nihongo recently, with manga as one of the key use cases I was thinking about. I came up with an interface I don't feel like I've seen elsewhere, where you just tap on words to look them up, so it doesn't get in the way when you're trying to read. I'd be super curious if you think this could be a useful tool for translators. Here's a demo video if you want to see what I'm talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffRxPyc9K8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffRxPyc9K8A

hiccuphippo 6y ago
Can you use a list of files in a folder, or zip file instead of using the camera? Plenty of artists sell their manga in patreon-style websites and I would like to read them.