Thanks to the current AI technologies, we can now run our offline AI manga translator on personal computers. In this article, we are going to talk about how to use ImageTrans, a computer-aided image translation tool, to translate Japanese manga. Since the entire process is done locally, it has no extra cost, no usage limits and no privacy problems.

Software Used

  • ImageTrans: an integrated workshop for image translation. It can extract the text with OCR, call AI translation, remove the text and reinject the translation.
  • A large language model tool, like LM Studio and Ollama, to call models like Deepseek, qwen and sakuraLLM. We are going to use Ollama in this article.

Start Local Services

  1. Start a local manga OCR servce which ImageTrans uses for Japanese recognition (guide). If you need to translation images in other languages, you can choose other services.

    mangaocr

  2. Install and run Ollama. Execute the following command to download the qwen model.

    ollama run qwen2.5

Use ImageTrans to Translate Manga

New Project

Create a new project based on the Japanese -> Chinese manga template.

new project

Using a template has many benefits. The text styles, the language pair, OCR and translation engines to use are all configured. If it requires a specific balloon detection model, it will also prompt you to download it.

Configuration

  1. Configure Ollama.

    In ImageTrans’s preferences, configure the ChatGPT plugin to let it call the local Ollama server.

    api settings

    We need to modify two params:

    • host: change to http://localhost:11434/v1
    • model: change to qwen2.5

  2. Configure custom workflow.

    Through menu->project->batch->custom worflow to open the custom worflow form. Set the translation engine to ChatGPT and save the settings.

    custom workflow

Import Images and Start Translation

Import the images and right click on the image. Through current image -> one-click translation (custom workflow), we can translate the current image. We can translate all the images through batch operations.

one-click-translation

Demo video:

Sample Translation Result

Source Target
あの子ヒンメル様の仲間なんだって? 听说那孩子是辛美尔大人的同伴？
悲しい顔一つしないなんて、 连一个悲伤的表情都没有，
薄情だね. 真是薄情啊。
おやおや、私達もしていませんよ. 哎呀哎呀，我们也没有啊。
司教はまじめにやれ! 主教认真点干！
この薄情者! 这个薄情的人！
ほっはっは.手痛いですな. 哈哈哈哈。真让人痛心啊。
…だって私、この人の事何も知らないし… …可是我，对这个人的事一无所知啊…
たった１０年一緒に旅しただけだし… 只是一起旅行了仅仅十年而已…

ヒンメル will be translated as 希梅尔 by default. Here, we can specify it as a term with the right translation (辛美尔) to regulate the translation of proper nouns.

terms