Japanese publishers, including Shueisha and Shogakukan, have invested $4.9 million in Mantra, a startup leveraging AI to accelerate manga translation.
I don’t read many mangas, so I don’t know how good or bad the translations are, but I thought the news was interesting at least.
I’ve seen enough “Google translations” to know I want nothing to do with this venture.
Not the same thing. Not even close.
It’s a translation done by a machine, making frequent mistakes and failing to understand the wider context that contributes to the intended meaning. It’s the same in every way that matters.
In the context of my work, translations done by LLMs are working great so far and have no problem grasping context. And that is with general models and not specialized ones for the task which I assume this will be. So I will give it a chance instead of outright jumping on the AI hate train.
Grasping context when there’s subtext and allegories is not enough.