Manga translation has its own vocabulary. Some of it comes from publishing, some from fan scanlation communities, some from linguistics, and a growing share from computer vision and AI.
This glossary collects the terms you'll run into most often, whether you're reading raws, working on a translation team, or just trying to understand why a translated page looks the way it does. Each entry is short, and where we've written a deeper guide on the topic, we've linked to it.
Last updated: October 2026
Source material and formats
Raw
The original, untranslated version of a chapter or volume. "Raw" can mean a digital release, a scan of a printed book, or a screenshot from a reading app.
Tankōbon
A collected volume that gathers several serialized chapters into one book. Most raw scans of print manga come from tankōbon.
Webtoon
A digital comic designed for vertical scrolling: one long strip instead of separate pages. The standard format for Korean manhwa and much modern Chinese manhua.
Page spread
Two facing pages designed to be read as one image. Spreads need special handling, because splitting them breaks the art and text that cross the middle.
CBZ
A comic book archive: image files packed into a ZIP container, named in reading order. One of the most common formats for digital comics. [link: How to Translate CBZ Manga Files with AI]
EPUB
An e-book format. Manga EPUBs are usually fixed-layout, with each page stored as an image, which makes them different from text-based novels. [link: How to Translate Manga in EPUB Files]
Resolution
The pixel dimensions of a page image. For translation, resolution matters more than almost anything else: small text and furigana become unreadable when images are downscaled or heavily compressed.
The translation pipeline
Translating a manga page is not one step but several. These are the stages, roughly in order. [link: How Manga Translation Actually Works]
Text detection
Finding where text appears on a page. In manga this means locating speech bubbles, narration boxes, floating text and sound effects, often against busy artwork. [link: How AI Detects Speech Bubbles in Manga]
Speech bubble
The balloon containing dialogue. Its shape carries meaning: smooth for normal speech, spiky for shouting, wavy for nervousness, cloud-shaped for thoughts, dotted for whispers.
OCR (optical character recognition)
Converting the image of text into actual characters. Manga OCR has to handle vertical Japanese, handwritten lettering, stylized fonts and low-quality scans. [link: Manga OCR Explained]
Reading order
The sequence in which text should be read. Japanese manga reads right to left, with vertical text, and each page contains many panels and bubbles. Getting the order wrong makes correct translations read as nonsense. [link: How AI Understands Manga Reading Order]
Machine translation (MT)
Automatic translation by software. Modern manga translation increasingly uses large language models, which handle context and tone far better than older sentence-by-sentence systems.
Context window
How much surrounding text a translation model can see at once. Translating a full chapter together, rather than page by page, gives the model the context it needs to keep tone and names consistent.
Cleaning
Removing the original text from the image. On a white bubble, cleaning is simple. Over artwork, it requires rebuilding what was hidden.
Inpainting
Reconstructing the parts of an image hidden behind removed text. AI inpainting fills in backgrounds, screentone and line art so the page looks untouched.
Redrawing
Manually or automatically recreating artwork, especially under large sound effects or text that crosses detailed art. Redrawing is one of the most time-consuming parts of high-quality translation.
Typesetting
Placing translated text back into bubbles, choosing fonts, sizes and line breaks so it fits naturally. Japanese bubbles are often tall and narrow, built for vertical text, which makes fitting horizontal languages difficult. [link: How AI Typesetting Fits Text Into Speech Bubbles]
Quality check (QC)
A final review of the translated page for errors, missing text, awkward line breaks and inconsistencies.
Features of Japanese text
Vertical writing (tategaki)
Japanese text written in columns, read top to bottom, with columns moving right to left. Standard in manga dialogue.
Kanji
Chinese-derived characters used in Japanese. A single kanji can have several readings, which matters a great deal for names.
Furigana (ruby text)
Small pronunciation guides printed beside kanji. Common in manga for younger readers. Authors sometimes use furigana creatively, writing one word and marking a different reading, so the kanji carries the meaning and the furigana carries the spoken word.
Sound effects (SFX)
Stylized words drawn into the artwork, like ドン (a dramatic impact) or シーン (silence). Often hand-lettered and integrated into the art, which makes them the hardest text on a page to translate. [link: Why Manga Sound Effects Are Hard to Translate]
Giongo and gitaigo
The two kinds of Japanese sound effects. Giongo imitate real sounds (a door slamming). Gitaigo describe states with no sound (a sparkle, a stare, an awkward silence). English has many words for the first kind and very few for the second.
Honorifics
Suffixes such as -san, -kun, -chan, -sama and -senpai that signal relationships between characters. Changes in how a character addresses someone are often important story moments.
Role language (yakuwarigo)
Stylized speech patterns that signal a character type, like the rich girl's "desu wa" or the old professor's "ja." Rarely used in real life, but common in fiction, and difficult to reproduce in other languages.
First-person pronouns
Japanese has many ways to say "I": ore, boku, watashi, washi and more. Each implies a different personality, age or status, and most of that nuance disappears in English.
Translation decisions
Literal translation
Translation that stays close to the original wording. Accurate, but sometimes stiff or confusing.
Localization
Adapting a translation for the target audience: rewording jokes, idioms and cultural references so they land naturally. More readable, but further from the original.
Translator's note (TL note)
A short explanation added by the translator, either on the page or at the end of a chapter, for puns, cultural references or untranslatable wordplay.
Glossary (termbase)
A list of names, places, techniques and terms with their agreed translations. The single most important tool for keeping a long series consistent.
Consistency
Using the same renderings for names and terms throughout a series. Inconsistency, such as a name spelled two ways across chapters, is one of the most common problems in machine translation.
Romanization
Writing Japanese in the Latin alphabet. Long vowels can be shown different ways (Shō, Sho, Shou), and series often settle on one style.
Name order
Japanese, Chinese and Korean put the family name first. Translations choose whether to keep that order or switch to Western order, and should stay consistent either way.
Honorific retention
Whether a translation keeps honorifics like -san and -kun or replaces them with English equivalents. Many readers prefer them kept; others find them distracting. The key is to choose once and apply it consistently.
Publishing and community terms
Scanlation
Fan translation of comics, usually shared without the publisher's permission. Historically the way many series first reached international readers. [link: Is Translating Manga Legal?]
Scanlator
A member of a scanlation team. Typical roles include raw provider, translator, cleaner, redrawer, typesetter and proofreader.
Licensed
Officially acquired by a publisher for release in another language. Many scanlation groups stop working on a series once it's licensed.
Simulpub
Simultaneous publication: an official translation released at the same time, or nearly the same time, as the original.
Official translation
A translation released by the rights holder or their licensed publisher. The best way to support creators whenever it's available. [link: Why Thousands of Manga Never Get Official Translations]
How these terms fit together
Here's a single sentence that uses many of them:
"The raw was low resolution, so OCR missed the furigana, the reading order broke on the page spread, and the typesetter had to redraw the SFX after inpainting failed."
In plain English: the source image wasn't sharp enough for the software to read the tiny pronunciation guides, the order of the dialogue got confused across a two-page image, and someone had to manually recreate the sound effects because the automatic background repair didn't work.
If that sentence makes sense now, you understand most of what goes into translating a manga page.
Keep exploring
Each stage of the pipeline has its own challenges. If you want to go deeper, these guides are good next steps:
And if you'd like to see the whole pipeline in action, you can try it on a raw page with AI Manga Translator.