Artificial Intelligence is taking over the world with ground-breaking developments every now and then. And now, the same is going to power the world of mangas as well. In a recent development, a Japan startup named Orange, based in Tokyo, has raised a whopping amount of $19 million for AI-assisted translation of Japanese manga.
The investment round was led by Japanese publisher Shogakukan along with 10 others in collaboration with JIC Venture Growth Investments. As reported by NikkeiAsia, Orange aims to translate around 50,000 Japanese manga titles into English in a span of five years with the help of artificial intelligence. Moving forward, we will talk about Orange’s future plan and a little bit about the organization in detail.
Orange and its AI Manga Translation roadmap
- All the translated manga will be distributed overseas.
- Additional investors in the project are Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Mizuho Capital, and SBI Investment.
- Orange has claimed to decrease the time (invested in translating manga) and cost by around 90%.
- Orange uses artificial intelligence to read manga through image analysis and character recognition.
- After that, the words are translated into English and other supported languages.
- The technology used by Orange is well-versed in translating complex phrases without losing the gist of it.
- After that, a human translator makes the corrections and adjustments if there is a requirement.
- With this technology, a manga can be translated in as little as two days.
- This is going to revolutionize the release structure of any manga in the global market.
- The first step of Orange will be to achieve the goal of 500 monthly translations.
- As announced, the startup will kickstart the manga distribution in the summer, starting from the United States via the Emaqi application.
- Not only this, but the titles will also be available as E-books.
- AI translation could change the game for the industry
What it means for the manga industry?
Orange’s step is going to motivate other publishers to use artificial intelligence to translate manga. This step by Orange is definitely going to be loved by manga fans all over the world. Until now,, most of the manga readers were supposed to rely on third party non-legit platform in order to read their favorite manga. Speculations are this step by Orange will also help in making readers rely more on official platforms to read the manga they want in the language they prefer.
AI’s role in development of Manga and Anime
There is a major difference between translating and creating a manga using AI. Until and unless AI is used to translate and modify the manga, everything is under control. Nonetheless, the way experimentation is going on, we can soon see AI playing a role in the production or distribution of anime shows, movies, and other stuff as well.
Previously, Netflix created the background of a short film, ‘The Dog and the Boy,’ with the help of Artificial Intelligence in 2023. The movie was three minutes long, and it failed to woo the audience, as most of them were disappointed with the AI integration. However, there are chances that in the future, we will get to see polished and better use of AI in creating anime.
