In Japan, a startup wants to use AI to speed up the translation of manga

Translating manga is a long and difficult process for several reasons, including the linguistic characteristics of Japanese comics and the limited number of professional translators compared to the large volume of manga that remains to be translated. According to the company, the number of manga officially available in English is currently about 14,000 volumes per year, or only 2% of the volumes published annually in Japan.

The company, founded in 2021, said it has completed a fundraise of 2.9 million yen (about 17.5 million euros), which will be used to develop its translation support tool based on “deep learning” models (an automatic learning mode based on artificial intelligence). neural network).

With this fundraising, the company also plans to launch an online manga store this summer in the US, its priority market.

Orange, which works closely with the manga industry, particularly Shogakukan, one of the sector’s main publishers, estimates that its tool will enable 500 volumes per month to be translated into English this year, five times more than the publisher’s current capacity. translation without the help of artificial intelligence.

“We will focus on England and the US first. In the future, we want to translate into other foreign languages, but we don’t have a specific plan at the moment,” Tatsuhiro Sato, vice president of marketing at Orange Inc, said in this regard.

According to a recent study by research firm Grand View Research, the global market in this sector has grown significantly in recent years and is expected to be worth over US$42 billion by 2030, at a CAGR of 18%.