Manga Image Translator

Manga-Image-Translator is an open-source Python pipeline for manga and comics. You pick a detector, an OCR engine, an inpainter, and a translator, then run the same job from a web UI, the CLI, an API, or a WebSocket. The license is GPL-3.0.

Definition

Manga-Image-Translator is the most comprehensive open-source pipeline for translating manga/comics. It supports one-click translation for many kinds of images, with many different detectors, OCR engines, inpainters, and translators. It is the foundational project that many other tools (cotrans, oomol-flows) build on.

• Repository: https://github.com/zyddnys/manga-image-translator
• License: GPL-3.0

Key Metrics

• Stars: 9,700
• Forks: 969
• Language: Python
• Docker image: ~15GB

Architecture - Modular Pipeline

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                manga-image-translator                     │
├──────────┬──────────┬──────────┬────────────────────────┤
│ Detector │   OCR    │Inpainter │     Translator          │
├──────────┼──────────┼──────────┼────────────────────────┤
│ CTD      │ 48px     │LaMa_large│ Sugoi / DeepL / ChatGPT│
│ CRAFT    │ 48px_ctc │ LaMa_MPE │ Sakura / DeepSeek      │
│ Paddle   │ 32px     │ SD/SDXL  │ Groq / NLLB / Qwen2   │
│ DBConvNext│MangaOCR │ original │ Papago / Youdao / Baidu│
└──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴────────────────────────┘
│            Web UI / CLI / API / WebSocket                │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Detectors

OCR Engines

Inpainters

Translators

Installation

pip (venv recommended)

python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # Linux/macOS
venv\Scripts\activate     # Windows
pip install -r requirements.txt

Docker

docker pull zyddnys/manga-image-translator

Usage

Web UI

python -m manga_translator --mode webui
# Open http://localhost:5003

CLI

# Single image
python -m manga_translator --input input.jpg --output output.jpg

# Batch
python -m manga_translator --input ./manga_pages/ --output ./translated/

# With options
python -m manga_translator -i input.jpg -o output.jpg \
  --detector ctd \
  --ocr 48px \
  --translator deepL \
  --inpainter lama_large \
  --target-lang ENG

WebSocket mode

python -m manga_translator --mode ws

Additional Features

Tech Stack

Pros

Cons

When to Use

• Best overall choice: when you need the most comprehensive manga translation tool
• Custom pipeline: when you want to pick each component (detector, OCR, translator)
• Docker deploy: when you need to deploy it as a service
• Build upon: when you want to build your own tool on an existing foundation
• Batch processing: when you need to process many images

References:

• zyddnys/manga-image-translator
• Cotrans (hosted)
• Docker Hub

See also: Cotrans · Comic Translate · Translator Comparison