How to translate Chinese manhua to English
Translate Chinese manhua into English: the settings to use, what is different about Chinese text, and why checking names and terms matters.
To translate Chinese manhua into English, add the pages, set Original language to Chinese, set Translate into to English and choose Translate. Chinese is supported as a source language and its quality is still improving, so read the result as a guide and check names and terms.
Chinese support is newer than Japanese. The menu has Simplified and Traditional Chinese, and Auto-detect can tell them apart as well. Only use pages you have the right to process.
Step by step
- Collect the chapter as PNG, JPG or WebP images, or as one ZIP, with names that sort in reading order.
- Open the WebApp and add the pages. Folders and ZIPs are sorted in natural order.
- Choose Translate. Manhua is usually already in color, and the colors stay as they are.
- Set Original language to Chinese. Auto-detect can work, but choosing Chinese avoids a wrong guess on a page with little text.
- Set Translate into to English, or another language you read, and press the button.
- Compare Original and Result for each page, then download the pages or a ZIP.
What is different about Chinese
- Chinese has no spaces between words, so the engine has to decide where words begin and end. A misread character can change a whole phrase.
- Many characters look alike, which makes resolution important. Thin strokes in a blurry image are easy to confuse.
- Lettering can be horizontal or vertical, and webcomics often place short lines of text directly on the art.
- Stylized titles and sound effects are drawn as part of the artwork and are left as they are.
Names and special terms
Names in Chinese are written in characters and have to be turned into sounds for an English reader. The engine can pick a different spelling on different pages. Stories with cultivation, martial arts or fantasy ranks use fixed terms for levels and techniques, and a machine translation may render the same term in several ways. Keep a short list of the names you see so you can spot a change.
Why it is still improving
Japanese manga has had the most tuning so far. Chinese and Korean are supported but have had less, so expect more misread characters, especially in stylized fonts and on busy art. Reports of what goes wrong help us decide what to tune next.
Reading in the browser
Many manhua sites show pages as ordinary images. The browser extension translates them in place as you scroll. You add it from the Chrome Web Store or Edge Add-ons.
Simplified and traditional characters
Manhua can be printed in simplified or in traditional characters. The menu has an option for each, and Auto-detect tells them apart by the characters. If one of them reads worse for you, tell us which, because it helps us see where recognition needs work.
Tips for a cleaner result
- Use the largest image you have. Dense characters need pixels.
- Avoid screenshots and heavily compressed JPGs, which blur thin strokes.
- Send an episode in one job so that names and settings stay the same.
- Read the first pages against the Chinese to see how the engine treats names in your series.
Long strips and pages
Many manhua are published as vertical strips. Each image can be up to 20 MB, and very tall strips count by their full size. If an upload is refused, split the strip at a gap between panels and send the parts in order.
Common problems
- Some lines stay in Chinese: they are probably outside a bubble, a sound effect or in a decorative font.
- A line makes no sense: a character was likely misread. Try a larger image with less compression.
- The wrong language was found: set Original language to Chinese instead of Auto-detect.