BicycleScans

What is Scanlation?

Scanlation is a portmanteau of the words "scan" and "translation". This is from the days where people in Japan would acquire a magazine like Shonen Jump, CoroCoro, or Dessert from their local konbini or bookstore, run home, and carefully tear out each page to manually scan into their computers. They would then email the files to somebody else, like an American, who would pay the helper for their time and then get to work translating the pages, slapping English into the bubbles and distributing to their buddies so that everyone can enjoy Love Hina.

Nowadays, manga, manhwa, manhua, webtoons, western comics, it's pretty much all released digitally. This mostly eliminates the practice of adjusting colors and contrast to maintain readability. Though due to low resolutions, some groups use an image upscaler to make the images easier to alter.

This is just a rough explanation, the history of scanlation is long and genuinely interesting, and I would recommend learning about it from Inside Scanlation, one of my favorite resources! My page is more about how to get started doing it yourself in 2024 :3

Is Scanlation Legal?

Honestly? No! Scanlation is basically book piracy. These comics are distributed for money, if you're not paying the artist for their art, you are stealing it.

Then Why Do People Scanlate?!

Quite frankly, because people don't want to or aren't able to pay for it. Nowadays, with digital releases, most Official English Translation comics are distributed on a "X coins per chapter" basis. You pay real money for fake money, and spend the fake money on chapters of something you want to read. The problem with that is sometimes the shit sucks, and you won't get your money back. Sometimes the title just gets dropped from the website/app, and now you have 3000 coins on a website/app you don't have a reason to use anymore. Sometimes the website/app is exposed by whistleblowers for treating artists like sweatshop slaves and contributing to the miserable lifestyle of a comic artist, or for making exploitative contracts, or simply stealing the money from the artists.

Sometimes it's none of those things, and the person doing the piracy is just impatient for the official translation, or is just broke and doesn't want to pay. Sometimes the 'Official English' simply does not exist. On the whole, scanlators are under no illusions that they aren't literal criminals, and are usually adamant that if you enjoy the title, you should support the creator.

What Constitutes a Scanlation?

Anything that involves taking a raw comic, "cleaning" it (sometimes called editing or CL/RD for clean/redraw), translating from one language to another, and typesetting that translation. Here are a couple of my own personal examples.

How Can I Start Scanlating?

It's remarkably easy nowadays to begin scanlating, even all by yourself! You only need 3 things:

• - Source of Raws
• - Translator
• - Image Editing Software

Source of Raws:

From 'my friend in japan' to 'shady korean sites with a billion epilepsy-inducing gambling house ads all over it like leprosy', there's any number of resources one could use to acquire raws-- original publications in their original language.

Because it is, again, completely illegal, these websites tend to go down frequently and come back with a new name, or 'your guy' who lives in Akihabara has upped his price, or what have you. Sources for raws are hard to come by, getting them in good quality is even harder, and even a perfect source won't last forever.

Translator:

Whether you know the language yourself or you 'have a guy', Translation is by no means the 'easiest part' of scanlation. Personally, my 'guy' is literally google lens and chatgpt. Machine translation (translating without a human involved) leaves the dialogue stilted and overly formal, especially in Korean, a HIGHLY contextual language. I have SO much trouble translating Korean because it's simply SO context-based that even soud effects "could be any number of sounds". It's frustrating! I prefer Japanese for this reason because a lot of Japanese sfx is just onomatopoeia lmao.

Image Editing Software:

I personally use photoshop, but gimp and even clip studio work just fine as long as you're intimately familiar with the program. Anything that allows you to heal, stitch, and lay down text will work just fine.

Extras

You don't need a drawing tablet, but it helps!

Now What?

Don't ask me dude you're an independent person, make your own decisions.

Reading Scanlated Manga

You can read comics online on any number of paid/free-to-start websites and apps, like Webtoon, Tapas, or MangaPlaza. There's also tons of free reader sites, from malware and porn ad riddled cesspools, to open source co-ops that run purely on donations. sites like 'kissmanga' or 'mangakakalot' tend to be targets of ddos attacks, takedowns, and even fakes that host phishing scams and keyloggers. It's genuinely dangerous to just blindly browse along without good protection.

I recommend Mangadex.org and Bato.to the most, as those two are what I mainly use. I also recommend visiting the actual websites from the scan groups you like so they can actually make ad money from traffic. People who get paid for their labor produce better quality work!

Becoming a Scanlator

It's literally as simple as joining a scan group's discord and going through their application process. Usually you are asked to complete a test, then you are assigned work and given timelines for expected production. In a huge group with lots of titles, you generally don't get to choose what to work on. Especially when it comes to huge titles like the Big 3 Shounen, or Super Popular Webtoons, these established scan groups generally don't let newbies within a mile of them. Work your way up!