Guides
Translating comics, one problem at a time
Practical guides to translating manga, manhwa, manhua and webtoons into English: what the terms mean, the choices translators make, and how to keep a series consistent from the first chapter to the last.
- 25 October 2026 · 5 min readHow to translate a webtoon into English, step by stepA practical guide to translating a webtoon: reading the episode first, keeping names and forms of address straight, cleaning lettering off colour art, typesetting a long vertical strip, and checking it on a phone.
- 25 October 2026 · 3 min readHyung, noona, oppa, sunbae: Korean honorifics in manhwa translationWhat hyung, noona, oppa, unnie, sunbae, -ssi and -nim mean, why they carry relationships in a manhwa, and how to translate them: keep, translate or drop, and how to stay consistent across a series.
- 25 October 2026 · 2 min read-san, -kun, -chan, senpai: keep Japanese honorifics in a manga translation?What -san, -kun, -chan, -sama, senpai and sensei mean, what dropping them says, and whether a manga translation should keep them, replace them with English or leave them out, with name order covered too.
- 25 October 2026 · 2 min readTranslating cultivation manhua: realms, sects and techniques, one name eachHow to translate cultivation and xianxia manhua: realm names like Qi Refining and Golden Core, sect titles like Senior Brother and Sect Master, techniques and places, and how to keep every term the same across hundreds of chapters.
- 25 October 2026 · 2 min readHow to translate manga sound effects (SFX): leave, caption or redrawHow to translate manga, manhwa and manhua sound effects: what words like ゴゴゴ, シーン and ドキドキ mean, the three ways to handle drawn SFX (leave, caption, redraw), their trade-offs, and keeping each sound the same across a series.
- 25 October 2026 · 3 min readManga typesetting: how to letter a translation into the bubbleA guide to manga typesetting (lettering): cleaning the page, choosing fonts, fitting English into round, tall and joined bubbles, emphasis, text on the art, and the mistakes that make a page look amateur.