Mantra Engine (above) can swiftly recognize text placed in the manga panel and identify itsorder, automatically turning the words on the page into a translation that considers the situationand the personalities of the characters. Leveraging their respective areas of specialty, themembers of Mantra (right) have striven to create a system that is easy to use. MITSUKI KUCHITAKA

THE AI-POWEREDMANGA TRANSLATIONSERVICESHARING BELOVED TITLESWITH THE WORLD

Aiming to send more manga titles out into the world in a shorter time, AI research graduates from the University ofTokyo have developed a machine translation system that has not only significantly streamlined the translation
process, but also enabled several unexpected innovations.
Japanese manga, such as Demon
Slayer, One Piece, Slam Dunk, andDragon Ball, have a huge following
around the world. Althoughmanga are now translated into
various languages, an endlessamount of pirated translations isstill being produced. Among themany reasons, two motivations
are the time lag between
translating and releasing thelatest titles and the limited varietyof titles existing in translation.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful iftranslations of a wide range ofthe latest titles were available
immediately and anywhere in
the world? Mantra Inc., a startup
founded in 2020 by AI-research
graduates from the University ofTokyo, is taking on the challengeof realizing such a future. Using
innovative AI technology, thefirm has developed a translation
system known as Mantra Engine,which not only pursues highly
accurate, natural-sounding andnuanced machine translations—afeat considered difficult withmanga—but has also succeeded
in halving the time conventionallyrequired for the process. “Thissystem has already been adopted
by more than 10 companies inJapan and overseas, where it
supports the translation of 40,000
to 50,000 pages (equivalentto about 250 titles) a month,”says ISHIWATARI Shonosuke,
Mantra’s co-founder and CEO.
Ishiwatari, who came up with
the idea of Mantra Engine in2018, had been pursuing his
doctorate at the University ofTokyo, researching how computers
process the language used ineveryday life. He chose to focus
on manga translations for the
medium’s unique characteristics—
a diverse range of fonts, distinctive
forms of speech dependent on
individual characters’ personalities
and emotions, and multiple
speech bubbles in a single panel—that make machine translation
especially complicated. Ishiwatarisays, “It was an area that promised
technological challenges.”
Together with HINAMI
Ryota, the company’s CTO, who
was also conducting research on
image recognition technology inthe same doctoral program, hedeveloped a dedicated engine thatenabled AI to learn from massive
amounts of data, focusing on

manga graphics and translation.
It succeeded in accurately reading
the location and content of thetext in an image and in translating
the words in colloquial form,
while taking their order and thecontext into account. The text
in the image can be translated
and replaced just by uploading
the manga’s data into the systemand selecting the language, withthe entire process taking as little
as a few seconds per page. “If weheighten the efficiency and releasetranslated versions without any
time lag, we can prevent pirated
manga translations from emerging.
One pirate translation group
has already announced that they
will no longer produce titles thathave been translated and released
through our system,” notes
Ishiwatari.
Meanwhile, barriers remainthat current technologies cannot
surmount. One is the fact thatISHIWATARI Shonosuke
polishing up a translation to
co-founded Mantra after acquiring hisconvey the nuances of a
doctorate from the University of Tokyo’s
Graduate School of Information Science andmanga in a natural andTechnology. He first became conscious of the power
enjoyable way is a highlyof manga during his childhood spent in China.
“Japanese anime and manga were the center ofcreative process that still
conversation among the local children. That gave me
requires human skill.
a sense of how powerful this culture could be,going beyond national borders to bring
Since Ishiwatari and his
people together simply for theteam do not feel compelled
enjoyment it provided.”
to have translations automated
100%, they have instead focusedon building a system to support
the overall translation process.
As the translation is carried out
in the cloud through ordinary
web browsers, anyone can workon a project without using any
special applications. Additionally,
multiple individuals can work
remotely at the same time, fromanywhere in the world, withIn 2019,
Mantra participatedin SXSW (South bySouthwest), a creative conference
that covers a broad range of fields fromtechnology to culture. The company
plans to also focus on translating
manga from countries otherthan Japan.

feedback and confirmation given
through the system itself.
In 2021, the system wasutilized in the translation ofa major Japanese publisher’s
popular manga series, carriedout by enthusiastic overseas
fans for simultaneous release in
English and Japanese. According
to Ishiwatari, “The cloud-based
system turned out to be perfectfor cross-border collaboration. In
the future, it may even be possible
for fans worldwide to get involvedin the translation of varioustitles.” This is the future that hehas dreamed of. “In addition to
being a technological pursuit,
we originally launched Mantra
because we also wanted to use AI
to go beyond national borders anddeliver a wonderful culture acrossthe globe. We believe that theworld will become a little morepeaceful if manga can encourage
further international exchange.
That is how we want to contributeto the global society.”