Buy & Translate Manga, Buy More Manga

If you have visited the Mainichi Shinbun’s English site in the last few days, you’ve probably noticed ads for a business called MangaNovel. According to their press release, they are offering a deal to anyone willing to create English translations of the Japanese comics they sell:

The “Manganovel” Concept:

1. Members buy Japanese version of comics for $4 to $5.
2. “Reader-translators” translate the comic to other languages.
3. The “reader translator” e-mails the “translation” to “Manganovel” and can price it at either free or 2 percent of the original comic price.
4. Readers can purchase the original Japanese comic and the translation data.
5. If a translation is purchased, the “reader-translator” gets 50% of the sale price as a royalty.
6. Readers who purchase translations can review them on “Manganovel’s” discussion board, and use reviews to select a translation of a comic from among multiple translations. The original “reader-translator” can also use the feedback from discussions to revise the text and try to improve it.

As Japan Newbie has noted, the money users earn back for their hard work is incredibly tiny, so nobody should expect to make mega bucks from this service. However, it’s still a pretty interesting deal for otaku looking to practice manga translation.