Ancient Magus Bride Manga return sparks controversy for AI translation

In a bid to speed up translation and distribution, publisher Bushiroad has announced that it is using Mantra Engine (which specialises in manga translations) to translate the series going forward. This practice will be used for all Bushiroad's manga from May 2024 and be uploaded onto Comic Growl, the company's new online publishing site. The Ancient Magus Bride is available from today (21st December).

Reactions to the news have been mixed, with many unhappy that this will take jobs away from human localisers. However some have been open to the practice given some notoriously poor localisations that feature inappropriate humour, poor context and outright political messaging that were at no time the intention of the original author.

Time will tell if other publishers follow suite, but should it prove to be mostly accurate, it's hard to see how the time and cost savings can be ignored.