3 ms·

A little off-topic, but what is the best way to translate manga into other languages? I have been looking for a tool that makes this easy, but i haven’t found a

by olah_1 5y ago

A little off-topic, but what is the best way to translate manga into other languages? I have been looking for a tool that makes this easy, but i haven’t found anything yet. I’m talking about making new translations myself, not tools that will scan the page and run it through google translate.

BasouKazuma 5y ago
If you already read Japanese and are just looking for a tool to help with the workflow, one tool that’s really promising is Serifu, a translation markup language being developed by translator Paul Starr: https://github.com/papatangosierra/serifu https://github.com/papatangosierra/serifu
- olah_1 5y ago
  This looks great, but how do you convert it to a comic? You need the comic author to use the format, but what tool does the author use? They need to define the dialogue boxes on the pages and somehow link those boxes to the markup format, right?
dayvid 5y ago
Last time I checked (years ago haha), you would use Tesseract OCR and some other translation tool. There are more sophisticated methods now that include AI to include visual context for translation (https://syncedreview.com/2020/12/31/japanese-manga-translation-via-multimodal-context-aware-framework/ https://syncedreview.com/2020/12/31/japanese-manga-translati...). Not sure what’s most popular or open source now
aidenn0 5y ago
As far as I know, you hand the translation to someone who knows Photoshop, and they do the lettering.
tendersej 5y ago
Shameless plug: my current project https://www.nekostrips.com https://www.nekostrips.com aims at making the process as frictionless as possible. Still very rough around the edges, but useful for hobby purposes. I have several improvements in the works.
- olah_1 5y ago
  Awesome! I will follow the development and try it out! Any plans to open source it? Is there a roadmap? My guess is that you’ll be adding custom font support (some unicode isn’t support by mainstream fonts and you can probably find a niche by supporting minority languages). also i suppose you’ll be adding bulk export to common comic book formats like cbz or cbr?
  - tendersej 5y ago
    Firstly, thanks for your message, it genuinely made me smile :) As for your questions: - No plans to open source it, unless I stop working on it. As for the roadmap, it is extensive. In random order (both in terms of importance and release horizon) I am planning: - exports as archives (if I remember properly, .cbr and .cbz formats are just renamed .rar and .zip respectively) as you mentioned - proper font selection/customization (and eventually, bring your own) as you surmised - workflow improvements (shortcuts, bulk commands vs current clicking item by item) - specifying bubble type, from visual type (text in closed bubble opaque or not, text over background) to purpose (speech, onomatopeia, in-world written text, meta explanation) and source (who is talking, to whom, etc) - moving the current "zoom" level from chapter to series: link to Knowledge Base, for easier lexical reference (with regards to man(ga|hwa|hua) names are often transcriptions of foreign words / names which are often translated back with varying degrees of success). - multiplayer - making the app not just usable but ergonomic on mobile screens - a lot more. I will add a roadmap section on the app. Origin story: I worked as a translator (handwritten medical forms, business communications) during my studies and got interested in what was considered the state of the art for CAT tools. I ended up building my own out of scripts, macros and rule-based processing because nothing provided the ease, flexibility and low overhead I was looking for. With nekostrips, I am convinced I can deliver a compelling tool for comics. If you or anyone else feels like discussing further, you can contact me through the form on the app, or on social networks.

by olah_1 5y ago

BasouKazuma 5y ago

If you already read Japanese and are just looking for a tool to help with the workflow, one tool that’s really promising is Serifu, a translation markup language being developed by translator Paul Starr: https://github.com/papatangosierra/serifu https://github.com/papatangosierra/serifu

olah_1 5y ago
This looks great, but how do you convert it to a comic? You need the comic author to use the format, but what tool does the author use? They need to define the dialogue boxes on the pages and somehow link those boxes to the markup format, right?

dayvid 5y ago

Last time I checked (years ago haha), you would use Tesseract OCR and some other translation tool. There are more sophisticated methods now that include AI to include visual context for translation (https://syncedreview.com/2020/12/31/japanese-manga-translation-via-multimodal-context-aware-framework/ https://syncedreview.com/2020/12/31/japanese-manga-translati...). Not sure what’s most popular or open source now

aidenn0 5y ago

As far as I know, you hand the translation to someone who knows Photoshop, and they do the lettering.

tendersej 5y ago

Shameless plug: my current project https://www.nekostrips.com https://www.nekostrips.com aims at making the process as frictionless as possible. Still very rough around the edges, but useful for hobby purposes. I have several improvements in the works.

olah_1 5y ago
Awesome! I will follow the development and try it out! Any plans to open source it? Is there a roadmap? My guess is that you’ll be adding custom font support (some unicode isn’t support by mainstream fonts and you can probably find a niche by supporting minority languages). also i suppose you’ll be adding bulk export to common comic book formats like cbz or cbr?
- tendersej 5y ago
  Firstly, thanks for your message, it genuinely made me smile :) As for your questions: - No plans to open source it, unless I stop working on it. As for the roadmap, it is extensive. In random order (both in terms of importance and release horizon) I am planning: - exports as archives (if I remember properly, .cbr and .cbz formats are just renamed .rar and .zip respectively) as you mentioned - proper font selection/customization (and eventually, bring your own) as you surmised - workflow improvements (shortcuts, bulk commands vs current clicking item by item) - specifying bubble type, from visual type (text in closed bubble opaque or not, text over background) to purpose (speech, onomatopeia, in-world written text, meta explanation) and source (who is talking, to whom, etc) - moving the current "zoom" level from chapter to series: link to Knowledge Base, for easier lexical reference (with regards to man(ga|hwa|hua) names are often transcriptions of foreign words / names which are often translated back with varying degrees of success). - multiplayer - making the app not just usable but ergonomic on mobile screens - a lot more. I will add a roadmap section on the app. Origin story: I worked as a translator (handwritten medical forms, business communications) during my studies and got interested in what was considered the state of the art for CAT tools. I ended up building my own out of scripts, macros and rule-based processing because nothing provided the ease, flexibility and low overhead I was looking for. With nekostrips, I am convinced I can deliver a compelling tool for comics. If you or anyone else feels like discussing further, you can contact me through the form on the app, or on social networks.