Several
large companies ,
including the manga publisher Shogakukan (original founder of Shueisha), will
invest in a startup that aims to bring some 50,000 manga translated by artificial
intelligence (AI) to foreign markets .
According
to a new report from Nikkei , a group formed by Shogakukan (“Detective Conan,” “Sousou no
Frieren”), the Japanese government's Japan Industrial Innovation Investment
Corporation and eight other companies will invest 2.92 billion yen (about
19 million US dollars) into an AI company that aims to translate more
than 50,000 manga titles using AI in the next five years. Manga
startup Orange was founded in 2021 and is made up of manga editors, AI
generators, game developers, and more.
Orange
claims its AI can translate manga in a tenth of the time of fully human
processes, describing its method of AI text translation, followed by
corrections from a translator. The startup adds that a fully translated volume could
be completed in just a few days. Orange works with other manga publishers, and
their AI-translated works will arrive in the United States this summer through
the upcoming “EMAQI” app. The offering will include manga aimed at
boys, girls and adults, and expansion to Spanish-speaking markets and India is
one of the main areas of study.
Naturally,
Orange's claims and methods will come under scrutiny. The industry's strong push
towards AI, with Crunchyroll stating that it was "focused" on testing
AI for anime subtitling, has been met with an equally fierce reaction from fans
and, just as importantly, of the translators. Many translators say they
have been fired and rehired under worse conditions to now work with AI, even
though AI translations are often poor, leading professionals to do the same
work for less pay.
However,
Nikkei highlights the opposite argument. The Japanese anti-piracy group CODA
highlights that the amount of damage to the publishing industry caused by
piracy is between 2.57 and 5.40 billion dollars. One of the main factors
contributing to piracy is the lag between releases in Japan and foreign regions
in the West. Since many fans justify piracy as a service problem, AI
translations should reduce this problem, making scanlation sites run by humans
(and therefore taking longer to translate chapters than an AI) are less
attractive to them .
Source: Nikkei
