The flow of fan translated manga around the interweb

Introducing: 漫漫看 (loosely translates as Read A Comic). The site allows you to view, online, page by page, the latest manga (= Japanese comic) releases. The text within these manga has already been translated into Chinese. There are similar sites in English, though they are much more underground than their Chinese counterparts.

The translated text is often traditional rather than simplified Chinese, though both are present. Of the two manga I browsed, one was a scan from an official Taiwanese published release of a book, while the other seemed to be a translation from the latest installment in Japanese aggregated comic serials. The latter fan translation included the usual fine print about supporting the commercial versions when they come out and not selling the fan translation.

Interestingly enough, the English versions of one of the manga I looked at had traces of text that was sometimes in simplified Chinese, sometimes in traditional Chinese, sometimes in Japanese. This suggests that the comic was translated from Japanese to Chinese, then from Chinese to English.

From what I’ve seen, Chinese translations of Japanese comics are pretty easy to find because Chinese translators are quick to churn them out. (It helps that Japanese is more similar to Chinese than English.) Meanwhile, Japanese-to-English translators are somewhat of a commodity in the fansubbing/translation community. So for the series I looked at, there happened to be more Chinese-to-English translators available/interested and so the translation became second-hand.

In this way, virtual china acts as a bridge between the Japanese and English speaking worlds.