The deputy editor-in-chief of the digital service Shonen Jump Plus for Japan and international service personnel Manga Plus for international regions, Yuta momiyamaShe spoke to the Japanese portal ITmedia on the internationalization of manga through digital service in a very in-depth interview, including the growth in international manga sales and how machine translation could help bring more manga to more countries.
Momiyama, who is not only in charge of the Shonen Jump Plus, but also helps launch programs for aspiring people, such as the manga-making web series MILLION DAY, has high hopes that the service Manga Plus Help Manga grow internationally. Momiyama explains that she understands “Foreign manga sales account for 10-20% of the global manga market“. It also says:”If the climate for overseas digital manga delivery improves, overseas and domestic sales could split by 50% in about ten years“.
The editor stated that this was mainly due to the fact that “Japanese anime can be seen on streaming sites, making manga easier to sell thanks to anime“, So what “Japanese manga is interesting and of high quality. So as long as we offer an ideal way to read it, it is sure to grow“. Wait for the service Manga Plus Help “the popularity of a series spreads internationally at the same time as in Japan“.
“I feel like this is similar to my experience when I started working on the digital launch of Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in Japan. When the smartphone version of the magazine hit the market, the digital presence was still weak, but that seems to have changed quickly.Momiyama has been expanded. Momiyama is part of the team that helped make series like SPY x FAMILY and Kaijuu 8-gouthat are popular all over the world, although they have not yet received any anime adaptations.
Even so, Momiyama confirms that the international expansion has some negative aspects, such as:Lack of resources to manage the service in each country“And that every region has its own”Form of censorship“. He admits that the editor Shueisha “You don’t have enough knowledge in these areas yet“. Other problems include the process of moving from pencil and paper to digital, and Momiyama claims that when”we consider what is most desirable for readers, works and authors in the digital age, we have to adapt existing business models, which makes it difficult to accelerate the process of creating new services“.
The final topic Momiyama tackles is one that many national players have: Communication and language. Say what “At the moment the translation costs are very high, which makes the simultaneous distribution very difficult” and “Machine translation quality is still relatively low, but it will improve over the next ten years. Once high quality translations are available in a wide variety of languages, a lot will improve“.
Source: IT media
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