A Japanese company offers to translate manga using artificial intelligence
This is news that will not please those who have worked for years to learn the Japanese language with the aim of becoming manga translators. The profession risks being, if not destroyed, at least greatly reduced by artificial intelligence. Publishers and the Japanese government are pushing to accelerate the digital distribution of manga abroad using AI.
The objective is clearly stated from the outset: translate manga very quickly, at a very low price and in very large quantities thanks to dedicated artificial intelligence. This initiative by a small Japanese company called Orange (pronounced orenji in Japanese), is supported by one of the largest Japanese manga publishers, Shogakukan, and a fund dependent on the Ministry of Industry.
On a heritage of some 700,000 volumes of manga, “too few”, about 2%, are translated into English according to Orange. The company wants to offer 500 new volumes in English per month, or five times more than all monthly translations in all languages. Orange will first offer English translations in the United States, via a digital platform called emaqi which will be installed this summer, then other languages will follow.
The total number of manga available in the language of Shakespeare should increase to 50,000 within 5 years. Officially, it is also a question of killing the activity of pirate translations. As for professional translators, they will be reduced to the rank of proofreaders of the AI’s work.
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