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 think this is an important point. If this can take the translator’s ego out of the equation it would be a clear win. But then, they would probably insert it back again in the revision stage. My best case scenario would be that with the AI doing the heavy lifting there is enough human workforce going around so that those type of translators who rewrite the story find themself jobless.