RuneManga: a manga and manhwa translator

RuneTranslate translates games. Its sister project, RuneManga, does the same job for the comics you read between them: it is a manga translator that takes a page in Japanese, Korean, Chinese and more and gives it back in your language, with the original lettering erased and your translation set inside the speech bubbles. It handles manga, manhwa and manhua, runs on the web or inside your browser, and every new account starts with 30 free pages.

Why a separate tool? A game keeps its text as strings in files, which is why RuneTranslate can pull the lines out, translate them and put them back. A comic page is a picture. The words are drawn into the art, so translating them means finding the text, reading it, removing it without leaving a smudge and lettering the translation back in. RuneTranslate’s Studio does that for the text baked into game artwork; RuneManga does it for whole chapters.

What RuneManga does to a page

Every page goes through three states, and you can compare them before you download:

• Original: the page as it was published.
• Cleaned: the lettering erased and the background under it filled in, so no trace of the old text is left in the bubble.
• Translated: your language set into each bubble.

The steps in between, finding the text, reading the characters, translating and repainting the art, are explained in how AI manga translation works.

A manhwa translator that keeps the colors

Manhwa and webtoons are usually in full color, so a translator should touch the words and nothing else. RuneManga changes only the lettering and leaves the colors exactly as they were drawn. As a manhwa translator it takes a whole episode in one job, and a very tall strip can be split at a gap between panels and uploaded in order. Chinese manhua works the same way. If you are not sure which of the three you are reading, manga vs manhwa vs manhua explains the differences.

Two ways to use it

The WebApp

Sign in, add your pages, pick a language and download the translated chapter. You can drop in images, a ZIP or a folder, paste a screenshot, or translate a manga PDF. A free account sends up to 50 pages in one job and the paid plans go up to 500. It runs in the browser on any device, with nothing to install.

The browser extension

The manga translator browser extension translates pages in place, on the sites where you already read, as you scroll. It does nothing on a site until you switch it on there, translates only the pages near where you are reading, and puts the originals back when you switch it off. It runs in Chrome, Edge, Opera and Brave, and a Firefox version is in review.

Languages

RuneManga reads Japanese, Korean, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Indonesian, Vietnamese and Thai, or detects the language for you, and translates into 89 languages. Arabic and Thai lettering is still experimental.

Free to start

Every new account gets 30 free credits, and one credit translates one page. They never expire and no card is needed: you sign in with Google, Discord or email. Paid plans add credits every month, and one-off credit packs never expire either. The free plan, explained lists what changes when you upgrade.

What happens to your pages

Pages are processed on our servers and deleted automatically about an hour after the job finishes. They are not used to train models, and only the text found on a page goes to the translation provider, never the image itself. As with any translator, use it on pages you have the right to process.

What it does not do yet

• Sound effects drawn into the art are left as they are for now.
• Vertical Japanese lettering and text written straight onto the art, outside a bubble, are the hardest cases and are still improving.
• Colorizing black-and-white pages is in development and not available yet.
• Image quality matters. Clean, high-resolution scans give the best results, and choosing the source language yourself helps on pages with little text.

Try it

Open RuneManga, sign in, and the 30 free credits cover your first chapter. And if you came here for games, RuneTranslate is free to start too.