Scanlation: An Overview
If you don’t know what “scanlation” is, allow me to remedy that. Let’s talk about it as it applies to Japanese manga. It’s the process of taking a physical manga volume, scanning it to bring it into the digital realm, and then translating the digital version of the manga. Although, the translation part doesn’t always happen. Sometimes it’s just about getting a digital version.
This article is not intended to be a guide to the very involved process of scanlating manga; just an overview. I want to give you an idea of all the work that goes into scanlating manga. And I’m going to tackle it from the perspective of an unauthorised scanlation team, rather than from the perspective of an authorized scanlation team.