4 ms·

I've been a volunteer manga translator in the past, (also started getting paid for it after a while when our manga translation group started getting funded) and

I've been a volunteer manga translator in the past, (also started getting paid for it after a while when our manga translation group started getting funded) and a large part of it is using google translate or translation tools to help out with definitions or look for inspiration in translating the words in the manga so this could likely help out in that regard by saving the need of tools like google translate

JohnBooty 6y ago
I was thinking the same thing. This generally wouldn't replace human translators in a worthwhile way (in the way that grammar- and spell-checkers and even GPT don't replace human writers) but it might help with some of the drudgery.
pradn 6y ago
Yes, AI translation tools could produce starter text that a human could fix later. I assume the text is placed in speech bubbles manually? Perhaps in something like Photoshop? In that case, AI can also place editable text boxes at the speech bubbles, saving more time. I'd love technical details for how you translated manga!
meowzero 6y ago
I have a friend who worked as a professional translator and that's exactly what he did. He put the text through Google translate and fix any errors.
- numpad0 6y ago
  Forcing externalities improve cost efficiency
spookybones 6y ago
How were you paid? Patreon?
mxcrossb 6y ago
I consider myself able to read manga in Japanese, yet certainly encounter a few words each chapter which I have to guess the meaning of. So I can see how this would help. Yet my impression would be that this isn’t really that time consuming? I would think typesetting would be the most labor intensive by an order of magnitude.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  Out of the steps involved in a typical translate+typeset of a manga page (I've been personally involved in fan projects and have friends/family who do this commercially), I'd estimate the most time-consuming parts are: 2 - 4 Translation 1 - 2 Editing 1 - 4 Cleaning 1 - 2 Typesetting 1 Quality Control The effort involved in cleaning entirely depends on how good the source material is - you'd think professionals would get pristine high resolution pages without text on them, but you'd be wrong. A high quality cleaning job often means repainting a bunch of the art from scratch. If the cleaning is done poorly the typesetter is screwed. Some stuff is just plain easy to translate, other works will have a single page full of things you have to look up and sentences that only make sense with previous chapters as context (or even worse, FUTURE chapters as context). In some cases translators also have to first transcribe the work because they're sent blurry jpegs or png files instead of being sent text (again, you'd think this wouldn't happen, but...) QC and editing can often be done by the same person. One subtle gotcha is that your editor or QC (ideally both, but at least one) REALLY need to know the source language even if they're deferring to the translator - if only one of you is able to check the A->B it becomes very hard to spot subtle problems that can mess up the work.
ashkankiani 6y ago
Everyone I've talked to (including myself) who have to translate between Japanese and English do the same process. Let the machine give you a baseline, then clean it up where it has it makes mistakes/has a weird tone. Though Deepl does a pretty good job at matching tone/level-of-casual-words if you phrase your input English correctly. Human + machine assisted tooling is probably going to be the clear winner for a while when it comes to doing quality translations. As far as fully automated goes, I think it depends on language, but for Japanese it's like 80% there.

JohnBooty 6y ago

I was thinking the same thing. This generally wouldn't replace human translators in a worthwhile way (in the way that grammar- and spell-checkers and even GPT don't replace human writers) but it might help with some of the drudgery.

pradn 6y ago

Yes, AI translation tools could produce starter text that a human could fix later. I assume the text is placed in speech bubbles manually? Perhaps in something like Photoshop? In that case, AI can also place editable text boxes at the speech bubbles, saving more time. I'd love technical details for how you translated manga!

meowzero 6y ago

I have a friend who worked as a professional translator and that's exactly what he did. He put the text through Google translate and fix any errors.

numpad0 6y ago
Forcing externalities improve cost efficiency

spookybones 6y ago

How were you paid? Patreon?

mxcrossb 6y ago

I consider myself able to read manga in Japanese, yet certainly encounter a few words each chapter which I have to guess the meaning of. So I can see how this would help. Yet my impression would be that this isn’t really that time consuming? I would think typesetting would be the most labor intensive by an order of magnitude.

kevingadd 6y ago
Out of the steps involved in a typical translate+typeset of a manga page (I've been personally involved in fan projects and have friends/family who do this commercially), I'd estimate the most time-consuming parts are: 2 - 4 Translation 1 - 2 Editing 1 - 4 Cleaning 1 - 2 Typesetting 1 Quality Control The effort involved in cleaning entirely depends on how good the source material is - you'd think professionals would get pristine high resolution pages without text on them, but you'd be wrong. A high quality cleaning job often means repainting a bunch of the art from scratch. If the cleaning is done poorly the typesetter is screwed. Some stuff is just plain easy to translate, other works will have a single page full of things you have to look up and sentences that only make sense with previous chapters as context (or even worse, FUTURE chapters as context). In some cases translators also have to first transcribe the work because they're sent blurry jpegs or png files instead of being sent text (again, you'd think this wouldn't happen, but...) QC and editing can often be done by the same person. One subtle gotcha is that your editor or QC (ideally both, but at least one) REALLY need to know the source language even if they're deferring to the translator - if only one of you is able to check the A->B it becomes very hard to spot subtle problems that can mess up the work.

ashkankiani 6y ago

Everyone I've talked to (including myself) who have to translate between Japanese and English do the same process. Let the machine give you a baseline, then clean it up where it has it makes mistakes/has a weird tone. Though Deepl does a pretty good job at matching tone/level-of-casual-words if you phrase your input English correctly. Human + machine assisted tooling is probably going to be the clear winner for a while when it comes to doing quality translations. As far as fully automated goes, I think it depends on language, but for Japanese it's like 80% there.