Exploratory Endeavors #2: Scanlation

Once upon a time, there was a version of myself that didn't read manga. But time passed and at some point, I found myself reading scanlated manga from various sources. (Scanlation is taking comics in one language and translating it into another language) But like I mentioned with subtitling in the previous blog post, scanlation is often done voluntarily for free.

What composes scanlation? How hard is it? Why might people do it for free online? I decided to find out. Obviously, I can only translate languages I know, so I chose to try out scanlation on a manhwa that I have been reading: Tiger Coming In. Chapters 1-10 are available for free, so I grabbed the files for chapter 1 and got to work. But where do I start? As it so often happens in life, there was a great deal of high-quality knowledge on reddit.

There are a few main steps to scanlation. First is getting the raw source, in the original language. If whatever you're scanlating is only published in print, like in magazines, you'll need to scan it using a physical scanner, hence the term "scanlating". Then, you'll need to do a few photoshop tricks, mainly messing with the contrast and levels, to make it clean black and white without any of the noise from the paper or the scanner. Thankfully for me, webtoon manhwas are published on the web so there's no need to do this digitalization step. I just download the raw pngs straight from the source. Since chapter 1 is free, it doesn't have any encryption or watermarking on it.

Next, it needs to be cleaned. By cleaning, this means removing the text in the original language. For text in speech bubbles, this is easy, just draw a white rectangle/oval and you're done. But the trouble is in the sfx/background speech that is overlayed directly on the image. You have to painstakingly erase all of the text, and fill in the missing part of the image by redrawing it. If the text happens to be over halftones or chaotic patterns, good luck. Unfortunately for me, Tiger Coming In is full color and illustrated, so there was a bit more work for me. At the very least, the redrawing doesn't have to be super high quality since the new text will cover most of it right back up.

Of course, arguably the most important step is the actual translation. If you have multiple people, this can be done while the cleaning/redrawing is ongoing. Simply take all the text present, and translate it into another language. The tricky part is preserving each character's personalities and speech mannerisms, even as you translate into a language that might not have an equivalent. For Tiger Coming In, this is a significant point. Each character has a unique way of talking, whether that be casually, formally, or perhaps even in broken toddler talk. What I've learned is to not just to translate the text, but to imagine you're the character and what you would say in that scenario. Sometimes, this means that your translation ends up quite different from the literal translation of the words, but if it leads to a better reader experience, that's what's best - although I tend to lean more literal with my translations anyway out of personal preference. Something else I noticed while translating was the severe lack of onomatopoeia in the English language. Korean and presumably Japanese has onomatopoeia for almost every action and a million varieties of every action, but English is limited. So, for a lot of background sfx, they just end up getting translated to the verb the sfx is describing. Too many times, stuff just got translated into "stand", "jump", or "step", which I think is one of the major downsides.

Next, once you have your translation, it's time to place them onto the cleaned images in a process called typesetting. This step is mostly straightforward, although if you're starting a new series there's some groundwork that needs to be laid. You have to pick your font (out of many free/paid options), figure out what your default font size will be, and how you'll depict emphasized speech bubbles. There are some guidelines, like not leaving orphaned words on its own line, or not stuffing a speech bubble to the max, but it's pretty basic. Sometimes, you'll have to typeset text that had special effects like a gradient fill or glow and those can require a bit more work, but this step should go by relatively quickly.

Once you've done all that work, your scanlated manga/manhwa is completed, and it can be published. In my case, I had finished chapter 1 of Tiger Coming In! I didn't particularly publish it anywhere since other people had already done a better job, but it was cool to finally export my completed work. All in all, from sourcing the raws to the final proofreading step, it took about 5 to 6 hours for one chapter. It's quite a bit of work! Most of the work is in the cleaning/redrawing step, with translating also taking a significant chunk of time. I could now see why scanlation groups usually only uploaded a max of one chapter a week - it's really the max you can do in your free time! With my newfound appreciation for scanlators, this exploratory endeavor comes to an end. Thanks for reading.