Best Tools to Translate Manga in 2026: Compared

If the official translation of a series has stalled and the raw chapters are already out, you’ll probably try a translation tool to keep reading. Most people start with Google Translate, DeepL, ChatGPT or Papago. These are strong general translators, but manga text sits inside images, often set vertically in stylised fonts, so how well they work depends a lot on how you feed them the page.

This post compares the common options for manga specifically. They’re in no particular order.

What to look for

A few things matter more for manga than for ordinary text:

• Workflow. Does the tool work on the page while you read, or do you screenshot and upload each panel?
• OCR on manga lettering. Can it read vertical Japanese and comic fonts reliably?
• Context. Does it see the whole page, or one bubble at a time? Japanese often drops subjects, so context changes the meaning.
• Platforms. Desktop, phone, or both?
• Cost. What do you get without paying?

Comparison table

Tool	How you use it for manga	Platforms	Free option
Google Translate	Screenshot or camera, one image at a time	Web, Android, iOS	Free
DeepL	Upload images or text	Web, desktop, mobile	Free tier, paid plans
ChatGPT	Upload an image and ask	Web, mobile	Limited free use, Plus is $20/month
Papago	Screenshot or camera	Mobile, limited web	Free
Microsoft Translator	Image translation in the mobile app	All major platforms	Free
Manga translators (Madomi and others)	Translate on the page as you read	Varies by tool	Usually a free allowance, paid for more

Google Translate

Google Translate is where most people start. It supports over 130 languages, runs on every platform, and needs no account. Its camera and image modes let you photograph or screenshot a panel and get a translation back in seconds, which is handy for a single page.

Its page translation doesn’t work on manga, because the text is part of an image rather than HTML. So for a full chapter you’re screenshotting and uploading panel by panel. Its OCR is general purpose, so vertical text and stylised fonts cause more misreads than on printed signs or documents. We covered the exact steps in how to translate manga with Google Translate.

DeepL

DeepL’s translations generally read more naturally than Google Translate’s, and dialogue tends to keep more of its tone. That’s a real advantage for manga, where characters have distinct voices.

DeepL offers image translation, though what’s included depends on your plan and platform, so check before you rely on it. For manga it’s still a one-image-at-a-time process. We compared the two head to head in DeepL vs Google Translate for manga.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT can translate a manga page if you upload the image and ask. Because it looks at the whole image, it often handles context, cultural references and wordplay better than the plain translators, and you can ask follow-up questions about a line you don’t understand.

The output is a block of text rather than an overlay on the page, so you read the translation beside the art. It’s one upload at a time, the free tier limits how many images you can send, and ChatGPT Plus costs $20 a month.

Papago

Papago is made by Naver, the Korean company behind Naver Webtoon, and Korean to English is the pair it’s built around. That makes it a natural choice for manhwa.

Like the others, its image translation works from screenshots or the camera, one image at a time, and it doesn’t overlay translations on the page you’re reading. Its OCR isn’t trained on comic lettering.

Microsoft Translator

Microsoft Translator is a general translator that runs on all major platforms, with image translation in the mobile app and coverage of the major language pairs including Japanese and Korean. For manga it has the same screenshot-based workflow as the other general tools.

Manga-specific translators

There’s also a group of tools built for comics. They detect the speech bubbles, read the text, and draw the translation back onto the page, so you don’t have to screenshot anything. They differ in where they run. Some are Chrome extensions, some have mobile apps, some are web upload tools, and a few run locally on your own computer. Our post on how real-time manga translation works explains the pipeline and goes through these tools in more detail.

Madomi is one of them, and it’s our app, so weigh this section accordingly. It runs as a browser extension on Chrome and Firefox and as an app on Android and iOS. It draws the translation onto the page as you read, and on mobile it’s also a manga reader for your own files and online sources. It has a free plan with a monthly translation allowance, and unlimited translation is paid. Here’s what it looks like on a Korean manhwa page:

Manga-specific tools share some limits. Sound effects drawn into the art are often skipped or mistranslated, small bubbles can end up with cramped text, and machine translation still misses jokes and tone that a human translator would catch.

How to choose

For a single panel, Google Translate or Papago on your phone is usually enough, and nothing needs installing. If you care most about natural-sounding dialogue and don’t mind the extra steps, DeepL or ChatGPT will often give you better wording, and ChatGPT can explain a line when you’re unsure. If you want to read whole chapters without handling each page, a manga-specific translator saves the most time, and the main thing to check is whether it runs on the device you read on.

For more on the language side, see our guides to translating Japanese manga to English, reading Korean manhwa and reading Chinese manhua in English.

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