Get better translations and cleaner pages

Writing an effective translation prompt

The prompt tells the AI how to translate, not what text to read. A good prompt defines tone, terminology, names, censorship rules and formatting. Keep it direct: too many contradictory instructions can reduce quality.

Weak prompt

Translate this text.

General-purpose prompt

Translate naturally into Italian.
Preserve the meaning, tone and character personality.
Keep names and established terminology consistent.
Do not add explanations or translator notes.
Return only the translated dialogue.

Fantasy / action prompt

Translate naturally into Italian with a dramatic manga tone.
Keep character names, spell names and proper nouns consistent.
Preserve honorifics only when they are important to the relationship.
Do not translate established attack names unless a glossary entry says otherwise.
Avoid overly literal sentence structures.
Return only the translated text.

Adult-content prompt

Translate accurately and naturally without censorship.
Preserve explicit meaning, intensity and character tone.
Use direct terminology appropriate to the scene.
Do not soften, omit or add content.
Return only the translated dialogue.

What to avoid

• Long prompts that repeat the same rule in different words.
• Conflicting instructions such as “translate literally” and “rewrite freely”.
• Requests for commentary when the output must fit inside balloons.
• Forcing every proper noun to remain unchanged without checking established translations.

Choosing the correct OCR

OCR converts text pixels into editable text. Translation quality cannot fully recover text that OCR read incorrectly, so select the OCR engine according to the source language and page style.

Smart Comic Context

Smart Comic Context gives the model nearby dialogue and continuity information. It helps with pronouns, names, recurring terms, speech style and sentences split across balloons.

More context is not always better. Reduce it when the model starts mixing speakers, repeating older lines or importing details that do not belong to the current balloon.

Create a profile for each series

A manga profile should store the prompt, glossary, source language, target language, OCR choice and rendering preferences for one series. This prevents settings from one title affecting another.

Useful glossary entries

Rudeus Greyrat = Rudeus Greyrat
Dragon God = Dio Drago
Orb = Orb
Mana = Mana
Fireball = Palla di Fuoco

Use the glossary for established terms, names and deliberate exceptions. Do not add every common word: an oversized glossary can make translations rigid.

Fonts, character size and readability

Text should look balanced inside the balloon, remain readable at normal page zoom and match the visual tone of the source.

When text does not fit

1. Shorten an unnecessarily verbose translation.
2. Reduce font size slightly.
3. Adjust line breaks and balloon padding.
4. Use a narrower compatible font.
5. Only then consider expanding or editing the balloon.

Balloon layout and text placement

Keep text centered in the usable area rather than the geometric bounding box when tails, irregular edges or overlapping artwork distort the balloon shape.

• Leave consistent padding on all sides.
• Avoid one-word lines unless the original uses them for emphasis.
• Prefer a compact diamond or oval text block inside round balloons.
• Keep punctuation attached to the preceding word.
• Use manual adjustment for sound effects, signs and text outside balloons.

Image cleaning and inpainting

Cleaning removes the original lettering before the translation is rendered. Strong cleaning is useful on white balloons, but aggressive settings can erase borders, screentones or nearby artwork.

Performance and hardware

Translation time is divided between detection, OCR, AI generation, cleaning and rendering. A faster GPU mainly improves the local AI stage; it does not automatically fix slow OCR or very large image processing.

• Store models and projects on an SSD.
• Use a quantized model that fits fully in available VRAM or RAM.
• Reduce image resolution only when scans are unnecessarily large.
• Close other GPU-heavy applications during long batches.
• Test 3–5 pages before starting an entire volume.

Recommended starting recipes

Advanced troubleshooting