CORONA EX brings awful AI translations to the west

Japanese book publisher TO Books has opened up CORONA EX, a website hosting English translations of manga.

However, one of the four series that are currently available, The Swordwoman With Curse @COMIC, makes use of Google translation. As you’d expect, its a complete mess that doesn’t even translate sound effects (or any text outside of the default speech bubbles).

An example of the horrid translation used for The Swordwoman With Curse @COMIC

The other three series are digital versions of manga already translated by Seven Seas and J-Novel Club, though the about page notes that additional content such as bonus manga will not be included on CORONA EX.

What makes CORONA EX so baffling is that they’re charging $4.50 a month to view any chapters past the first for each series. Combining machine translations with a paywall will likely see the site crash and burn within its first few months, especially if the line-up of non-AI translated works continues to be small.

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