Sound effects (SFX)

What counts as a sound effect

A sound effect is a word that stands for a sound, a movement or a feeling. Japanese and Korean have many more of them than English, including words for things that make no sound at all, such as a glare, a sparkle or a tense silence. The Japanese シーン, read shiin, marks silence; ドキドキ, doki doki, is a racing heart.

Why they are drawn, not typed

In manga, the artist draws sound effects as part of the picture. Their size, shape and placement show how loud or sudden a sound is, and they often overlap characters and backgrounds. That makes them part of the art, unlike dialogue, which sits in bubbles.

How translators deal with them

1. Leave them as drawn, which keeps the art intact.
2. Add a small translation beside them, which keeps the art and adds the meaning.
3. Redraw them in the target language, which looks closest to an official release and takes the most work.

How RuneManga handles them

RuneManga leaves sound effects drawn in the art as they are, on purpose. Dialogue in speech bubbles is the priority. Erasing a large stylized effect means rebuilding a lot of the picture, and a wrong guess can spoil a good page. An option for sound effects may come later; there is no date for it.

Reading them in the meantime

• Use the scene: most effects are clear from what happens in the panel.
• Compare Original and Result for the page to see the effect in the original.
• Look the word up in a dictionary or a list of sound words if it matters to you.

Common problems and fixes

• An effect inside a bubble was translated: short sounds inside bubbles count as dialogue and are translated like any line.
• Part of an effect looks touched: tell us about the page, with the language pair.

• Inpainting
• Cleaning
• Why manga sound effects are not translated
• Why RuneManga misses some text on a page