(MENAFN- AzerNews) A Japanese startup said Tuesday it aims to use artificialintelligence to help translate manga comics into English five timesfaster and 90% cheaper than at present,Azernews reports, citing TheJapan Times.
Manga series such as "One Piece" and "Dragon Ball" are a hugesuccess story for Japan, with the market projected to be worth$42.2 billion by 2030, according to the startup, Orange.
But it said only about 2% of Japan's annual output of 700,000manga volumes are released in English, "partly due to the difficultand lengthy translation process and the limited number oftranslators."
But with its technology, Orange aims to produce 500English-language manga per month, five times more than theindustry's current capacity, and 50,000 volumes in five years languages will come later.
"Compared to translation of a book, translating Japanese used inmanga, which uses very short sentences of conversational languageoften full of slang, is extremely difficult," said Orange'smarketing vice president Tatsuhiro Sato.
"It is also difficult to figure out if a particular quote wasactually said at a scene, or if the line was a murmur inside one'sheart describing a mental landscape," Sato said.
Other challenges include the original text often being writtenvertically and finding equivalents for Japan's many onomatopoeicwords.
The firm announced that it had raised \2.92 billion ($19million) in funding from major publisher Shogakukan and nineventure capital groups including the government-backed JIC VentureGrowth Investments.
It said that its tool will also help the industry fight piracyin the industry, which is estimated to be worth $5.5 billionannually according to the Content Overseas DistributionAssociation.
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