Orange Introduces Comic Translation Model
Popular Japanese manga series like “One Piece” and “Dragon Ball” have achieved tremendous success. According to Grand View Research, the manga market is projected to reach a value of $42.2 billion by 2030. Despite their popularity overseas, only 2% of the 700,000 manga produced in Japan each year are translated into English. This slow progress in “Englishizing” Japanese manga is due to a complex and time-consuming workflow process, taking up to a month to complete.
To address this issue, Orange has launched the Factory translation tool, which utilizes AI to expedite the laborious translation process for manga, reducing the time by fivefold and cutting costs by 90%. So far, Orange has raised ¥2.92 billion (approximately $60 million) in funding.
Translating manga is challenging, and piracy translations are rampant. The inability to mass-produce official English translations has led to the proliferation of unauthorized versions in the market. “Pirated works often circulate before official translations are released,” says an industry insider.
Orange has developed Factory, a dedicated translation tool for manga. It employs AI image recognition and natural language processing techniques to read manga and translate the text into English. Orange’s specialized model can handle puns and other difficult-to-translate phrases. The AI-translated manga is then reviewed and adjusted by human translators and editors, completing the entire translation process within two days.
In addition to Factory, Orange plans to launch the digital manga store Emaqi in the United States in the summer of 2024. The app will offer readers manga translated by Orange and include personalized recommendations and manga trailers.
If AI-assisted translation and digital distribution become mainstream, manga can be exported immediately after publication in Japan, allowing official translations to be released faster and preventing the circulation of pirated works.
Despite some skepticism about the quality of AI translations and concerns about increased workload for translators, Orange has garnered significant investment. They have raised ¥2.92 billion (approximately $60 million) from nine venture capital groups, including Shogakukan, a Japanese publisher, and JIC Venture Growth Investments, supported by the Japanese government. JIC believes that investing in Orange will enhance Japan’s industrial competitiveness.
Similar to Spotify offering music and Netflix providing movies, Orange aims to provide diverse and affordable digital content for readers worldwide. “We want to create a world where everyone loves manga,” says the Orange team.
References:
Orange, The Japan Times, Comics Beat, Nikkei Asia, Nikkei Asia