Digital Comic Books Strike Translation Deal
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While paper editions of comic books tend to be more popular if they are old and wrapped in their original plastic, comic books in a digital format are circulating among today’s youth. While you might not see kids on the bus catching up with Betty and Veronica or rapidly turning the pages to the latest Spiderman story, they might actually be doing so on their phones or tablets. Marvel and Archie are two major distributors of digital comic books, and they have both signed a deal with a worldwide translation service iVerse to make sure their international sales are secure. More than 50% of all digital comic book sales are from international readers, so translated editions are necessary to boost sales and remain popular around the world. The project has been in development for approximately two years, and iVerse uses a specially designed method to make sure the translation is accurate and understandable. The words will go through two machine translations first, and then a final translation by a native speaker to make it more idiomatic.
Marvel to Go Global Immediately
With the release of multiple Marvel movies starring classic comic book stars, there is a high demand for translated Marvel comics around the world. People who had never even heard of Iron Man or Wolverine before the recent releases on the big screen want to learn more and start from the beginning. For that reason, iVerse will be translating the Marvel comics into every language to reach the global audience. iVerse’s professional translation is part of a multi-year deal with the company .
Archie is Starting Small
Though Archie has been sold digitally for quite some time, it is not as popular as Marvel internationally. However, the owners are hoping that the translations will change that and spark worldwide interest. Because that interest is not guaranteed yet, Archie will only be offering Indian, Japanese and Chinese translations to begin with, and rolling out other options gradually.
Once the translations through iVerse become available, the two comic book companies will be offering the digital copies on a myriad of different platforms. Amazon books, iBooks and different apps will sell the translated versions so that people can access them from anywhere in the world. Archie already offered a Spanish translation for its digital comics, but this was only available through iVerse’s store. Now, each translation will be more readily available.