There was a recent news story where a manga translation company called “MediBang” was accused of paying their translators unbelievably low rates. They responded by stating that the price in question was “only an initial starting price” which was ¥120 per page. This, understandably, provoked quite a discussion on low pay in the manga translation industry and I decided that the topic was worth taking a look at.
First off, we should discuss what the work of a translator consists of. Contrary to what many people believe, translation isn’t merely taking each word and converting it into another language verbatim. Instead, a translator must examine the intent of a sentence, any double meanings present, if any specific words set up future events etc. In other words, translation is an art rather than a science and a good translation should be able to adapt the work into a form where it evokes the same feelings and thoughts that it did originally.
Having established that translation is far more complicated than many in the general public might first assume, let’s discuss the low pay. The first time I can remember hearing about the low pay in the manga translation industry was when I listened to the 2nd of June, 2011 release of ANNCast. Keep in mind that wasn’t long after a dramatic fall in the US manga industry due to the closure of Borders, the closure of Tokyopop and too many low quality manga being released. In this podcast, Justin Sevakis and the late Zac Bertschy interview industry translation veteran William Flanagan and he confesses around the 50:30 mark that his rates are a “Third of what they used to be”.
When asked about this, William Flanagan noted the rise in scanlators who would translate manga, often crudely, for free and that this created a situation where companies were comparing the professional translator’s rates to the scanlators. Admittedly, this information is ten years old at this point but it does establish the dramatic change that the industry was going through.
If we want a more contemporary idea of what manga translation rates are in the present day, the same Anime News Network article covering MediBang’s response to low pay accusations also includes information from translator Meru who stated that the American manga industry standard is closer to $5 a page which is a significant improvement over the $1-2 per page that William Flanagan was being offered as recently as five years ago.
While that does represent a significant improvement, it’s still notable that this now results, based on William Flanagan’s statement that a 180 page manga would take 7-10 days to translate and that each page is now worth about $5, in an income of approximately $32,850 to $46,900 annually, assuming that they took no breaks during the year. This may sound acceptable until you realise that the living wage in the US in 2019 for a family of four is $68,808 per year.
Ultimately, the low pay in the manga translation industry continues to be a problem and there isn’t a clear solution. As long as translators continue to accept low rates and the public continues to struggle to tell the difference between a good translation and a mediocre one, it seems unlikely that we’ll see rates increase dramatically and fix this issue. Nonetheless, the fact that the pay per page has increased from $1-2 to about $5 per page in about five years does give me some hope for the future. Let me know your thoughts on the low pay in the manga translation industry, your thoughts on the MediBang situation, if you believe that scanlation is one of the reasons why low rates continue to be a problem and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs!