Welcome to MangaTime — the workbench for translation teams

Scanlation is a craft. It starts with cleaning the raw, runs through translation and redraw, and ends in a typeset page that reads as if it was always written in your target language. MangaTime is the workbench that follows that flow — end to end — without pretending humans are optional.

What MangaTime actually does#

MangaTime bundles the repetitive parts of a scanlation pipeline behind one interface:

• Bubble detection runs a trained vision model on each page and hands you every speech bubble, SFX, and text block as an editable region.
• Cleaning + redraw lets you paint a mask and have a diffusion model paint the ink underneath the text back in. Not a blur. Not a mosaic. Real line art.
• Terminology memory keeps character names, honorifics, attack names, and location strings consistent across an entire series — not just a chapter.
• Typesetting inspector exposes per-bubble font, leading, kerning, and SFX styling, so a typesetter can move fast without leaving the app.
• Side-by-side review shows raw next to final. Reviewers comment on specific bubbles. Editors accept or revise in place.

Who it's for#

MangaTime is built for teams. Translator, editor, typesetter, reviewer, admin — each has a role, and the admin layer has an approval queue so your Discord isn't the only line between your workflow and the outside world.

Why AI, and where it stops#

We drafted the entire product around one rule: AI assists, humans ship. Every step the AI produces is editable, auditable, and reversible. That means:

1. The LLM drafts a translation. The editor rewrites it.
2. The detector finds bubbles. You add, merge, split, or delete them.
3. The redraw model paints backgrounds. You can paint back over it.
4. Nothing is committed until a human approves.

What you can expect on this blog#

This site's blog is the long-form half of MangaTime. Expect:

• Typesetting deep-dives — font pairing for SFX, ragging dialogue, styling whisper bubbles.
• Editing workflow — QA passes, style guides, reviewer comments.
• Site comparisons — honest looks at aggregators, reader platforms, and typesetting tools.
• Translation craft — tonal equivalents, honorific handling, localization vs. translation debates.
• Release notes — what shipped, what's next.

Written by translators and editors, not marketers.

Next steps#

If you run a scanlation team, a publisher localization unit, or you're a solo editor who ships fast — open the workbench and request access. We're onboarding teams one at a time.

In the meantime, read a few posts. Argue with the call-outs. Send corrections.

— The MangaTime team