Scanlation (sometimes scanslation) is a term used for manga comics which have been scanned and translated by fans from its native language (usually Japanese or Korean) to another language, commonly English, French or Spanish. Scanlations are generally distributed for free via the Internet, either by direct download, BitTorrent or IRC. 2nd English edition of InuYasha Vol. ... In computing, a scanner is a device that analyzes an image (such as a photograph, printed text, or handwriting) or an object (such as an ornament) and converts it to a digital image. ... Look up translate in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... This article is about the protocol. ... IRC redirects here. ...

Like fansubs, their anime counterparts, scanlations vary widely in the quality of translation, grammar, and spelling. Because they depend on literary rather than spoken language skills, the comparative complexities of written Japanese can present difficulties. A related issue is the practice of scanlating from French or Chinese editions; nuances are lost through the layers of translation. Although, scanlating manga at the most basic level, i.e., replacing Japanese text with English, does not require significant editing skill, scanlation often goes far beyond the basics. Many releases undergo extensive retouching and cleaning before being distributed, though the effort may not be obvious. The written page also allows for extensive yet non-intrusive liner notes in the margins or in additions. Fansub - short for fan subtitled; a copy of a foreign movie or television show (most often anime) which has been subtitled by fans into their native language. ... Anime ) (IPA pronunciation: in Japanese, but typically or in English) is an abbreviation of the word animation. Outside Japan, the term most popularly refers to animation originating in Japan. ... Adobe Photoshop is a bitmap graphics editor (with some text and vector graphics capabilities) published by Adobe Systems. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Origins

At first, scanlations were undertaken as fan projects because there were no official releases in the West, and it was hard to get manga imported. Friends living in Japan would scanlate a manga for a friend. What may have started out as a favor became a project, and grew from there. Eventually well-organized manga groups were formed, which usually had their own webpage as well as an IRC channel. The latter was arguably more important in shaping the nascent scanlation community because IRC allowed real-time interaction between the group staff and the target audience. IRC allowed the groups to easily recruit new staff and also provided a means to distribute the scanlations via fileservers (commonly called "fserves"). These fserves, which could be created by anyone in the IRC channel, helped reduce the burden of distributing the manga scanlations.

The earliest organized manga scanlation groups mostly had their channels located in the IRC network DALnet. Examples of these groups include Mangaproject, Mangascreener, Manga-Sketchbook, and Omanga. Network instability and a later ban on file transfers eventually forced a move to a new home, mIRCx. This period was notable for probably having the greatest centralization of manga channels, i.e. the vast majority of the channels were located here. A sustained denial-of-service (DOS) attack caused the network to close shop. This prompted a second move to the network Irchighway, where presently most channels are located. However a fair number are located at Irctoo, as well as several at Rizon. A denial-of-service attack (also, DoS attack) is an attack on a computer system or network that causes a loss of service to users, typically the loss of network connectivity and services by consuming the bandwidth of the victim network or overloading the computational resources of the victim system. ...

The scanlation scene is quite younger than the anime fansub one; most of the older organized groups were founded after the year 2000. The recent years have been marked by an explosive increase in the number of groups and consequently, scanlated manga available. Several sites including Dailymanga, Manga Jouhou, and Baka-Updates list daily releases as well as maintain a database regarding each project and scanlation group. These sites can be used for tracking releases, searching by genre, looking for synopses, and the like.

A few people today probably do scanlations simply because they want to see their favorite manga unedited (no missing scenes, flipped panels, etc.), which has occurred especially for manga that is aimed at a younger audience, such as the popular Dragon Ball series. The Dragon Ball portion of the manga released in North America is now released uncut due to fan demand. Dragon Ball ) is a Japanese manga by Akira Toriyama serialized in the weekly anthology magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1984 to 1995, and originally collected into 42 individual books called tankōbon. ...

Recently, virtually all new anime is fansubbed, and most of it licensed for distribution by companies around the world. However due to the sheer number of manga series in Japan (which has the largest market for comics in the world), this will probably never be the case for manga. Scanlations are often done to translate manga to a language it never would be in otherwise. A dramatic example being the few groups who focus on alternative and/or adult oriented manga (seinen and josei manga) that tend to be overlooked by publishers in favor of more popular shōjo, shōnen, or anime otaku-aimed manga. Anime ) (IPA pronunciation: in Japanese, but typically or in English) is an abbreviation of the word animation. Outside Japan, the term most popularly refers to animation originating in Japan. ... This article may contain original research or unverified claims. ... Alternative manga are Japanese comics that are published outside of the more commercial manga market, or also manga that have different art styles from that commonly found in the most popular manga magazines. ... Seinen (Japanese: 青年, not to be confused with seinen (成年; adult)) is a subset of anime or manga that is generally targeted at an 18 - 25 year old male audience, but the audience can be much older with some comics aimed at businessmen well into their 40s. ... This article or section contains information that has not been verified and thus might not be reliable. ... Shōjo or shoujo (少女 lit. ... Shōnen or shounen (å°‘å¹´) is a Japanese word usually translated as young boy, although it is commonly used to refer to males of up to high-school age as well. ... Overweight, unkempt, bespectacled and fantasizing about an anime heroine--a popular otaku stereotype. ...

Legal and ethical issues

By the letter of copyright law (such as the Berne Convention), scanlation is illegal. The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, sometimes called the Berne Union or Berne Convention, adopted at Berne in 1986, first established the recognition of copyrights between sovereign nations. ...

It is almost never prosecuted, and like fansubbing, scanlation is viewed by many fans as an ethical way to read manga which has had no official translation published in their own language. Most scanlators, like fansubbers, stop distributing scanlations for manga that have been licensed, and advise fans of the manga in question to buy the official translation.

Historically, copyright holders have not requested scanlators to stop distribution before a work is licensed in the translated language; thus, scanlators have felt it is relatively safe to translate and scan such manga. However, they do so at their own risk. The risk was accentuated on February 14 and October 31, 2004, when Kodansha, Ltd. sent cease and desist letters to scanlator site Snoopycool. Of late, fansubbers have also received such notifications, like Media Factory's request to stop the translation of their works, such as Gankutsuou and Genshiken. This may signal a change in licensors' toleration of fan-translated material. February 14 is the 45th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... October 31 is the 304th day of the year (305th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 61 days remaining. ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The head office of Kodansha Kodansha Limited ) is the largest Japanese publisher of literature and manga, headquartered in (Bunkyo), Tokyo. ... Cease-and-desist is a legal term meaning essentially stop: It is used in demands for a person or organization to stop doing something (to cease and desist from doing it). ... Media Factory, Inc. ... Gankutsuou (Japanese: 巌窟王 Gankutsuō) is an anime series loosely based on Alexandre Dumas novel The Count of Monte Cristo. ... Genshiken ) (Sub-title: The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture) is a manga and anime series. ...

On the other hand, licensing companies (such as Del Rey Manga, TOKYOPOP, and VIZ Media) have used the response to various scanlations as a factor in deciding which manga to buy licenses to translate. Said TOKYOPOP's Steve Kleckner in regard to scanlation, "And, hey, if you get 2,000 fans saying they want a book you've never heard of, well, you gotta go out and get it."^[1]. Toren Smith (a long-time translator) is quoted in his blog as saying "I know from talking to many folks in the industry that scanslations DO have a negative effect. Many books that are on the tipping point will never be legally published because of scanslations."^[2]. Del Rey Manga, is a company that publishes manga in North America. ... For the music movie, see Tokyo Pop. ... This article deals with the American media company. ...

On occasion, some scanlators feel that certain manga series need to be translated by fans to preserve it from what is perceived as abusive or harmful censorship or editing. Some will continue scanlating regardless of licensing, while others will restart stopped translation if they feel professional translation companies are not doing a series properly. Most unhappy fans who with this feeling tend to follow the motto "If they don't do it right, then they don't have the right to do it (exclusively)."

Scanlators do not have access to the original editors, creators, or the artwork itself. Licensed editions have generally have a consistently high level of quality due to these extra options when works are translated.

Censorship

Western cultural norms differ from Japanese cultural norms. In the early days of localized releases of manga, story editing and minor censoring occurred in some series, such as the original American release of Dragon Ball. While large scale editing is no longer a common practice of translation companies, it still occurs regularly on a small scale. Real story changes are not common and rarely occur at all, though name changes into a local vernacular do infrequently happen. On the other hand, visual editing is fairly commonplace, though its degree varies. Dragon Ball ) is a Japanese manga by Akira Toriyama serialized in the weekly anthology magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1984 to 1995, and originally collected into 42 individual books called tankōbon. ... Look up Vernacular in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Many popular manga series, to varying degrees, will show topless nudity. Similarly displays of female undergarments (namely bras and panties) are very common. It is a regular translation company practice to simply white-out the nipples on exposed breasts or draw some cover over the showing undergarment. A pair of mens briefs Undergarments, also called underwear or sometimes intimate clothing, are clothes worn next to the skin, usually under other clothes. ... A brassiere (, commonly referred to as a bra, ) is an article of clothing that covers and elevates the breasts. ... Lingerie is a term, derived from the French language, for womens undergarments. ... A bottle of correction fluid Correction fluid is an opaque, white fluid applied to paper to mask errors in text. ...

Most fans that buy licensed manga from companies accept this unobtrusive censorship, usually because most licensed series are not of a distinctly strong mature theme. There are however marked exceptions.

In the American release of the manga series titled I"s by the popular author Masakazu Katsura, exposed nipples were censored, though not with traditional white-outs but instead by placing small five-pointed stars over the offending nipples. This obvious and obtrusive censorship received strong criticism by avid fans of Katsura's work. Is (アイズ) is a teenage romance manga by Masakazu Katsura. ... Masakazu Katsura (桂正和 Katsura Masakazu, born December 10, 1962) is the manga-ka of several works of manga, including Dream Fighter Wingman, Shadow Lady, DNA², Video Girl Ai, and Is (Aizu). ...

Similar was the release of the Tenjho Tenge manga by DC Comics' CMX. CMX decided to heavily censor and alter the content of the Tenjho Tenge series due to its prevalent 'adult' themes. These edits mostly consisted of covering of exposed undergarments and mild nudity. This was done to enable a change in the target age group market. Without such edits the T (13 years and older) rating could not have been achieved. The previous equivalent rating in Japan would have been considerably higher if directly translated into American ratings. Tenjho Tenge ) is a seinen anime and manga series drawn and written by the manga-ka Oh! great (大暮 維人 Ōgure Ito). ... DC Comics is one of the largest American companies in comic book and related media publishing. ... This CMX is the Finnish band. ...

Community

The scanlation community is similar to the fansubs community and the video game fan translation community, with various degrees of overlap. Many scanlation readers also watch fansubs, and were often introduced to scanlations some way or another through their interest in anime. A fair share of these people, who have the opportunity to directly compare the two media, often regard the manga superior to the anime of a particular series. This is often based on the observation that most anime tend to slowdown the pace of the original storyline by using methods such as prolonging the "recap from previous episodes" period in the beginning of the show, the use of long holding, meaningless frames and the use of "recap episodes" in an attempt to stretch the length of the entire series. These "dragging" technique can often be seen in long running anime series such as Dragonball and Naruto. Fansub - short for fan subtitled; a copy of a foreign movie or television show (most often anime) which has been subtitled by fans into their native language. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Some scanlation readers fear their favorite series will be licensed and be poorly translated or censored by the licensor. Others hope that the fanbase generated by the scanlation will encourage licensing of the work so they can purchase English-language tankōbon of the manga. Tankōbon ) is the Japanese term for a compilation volume of a particular series (such as a manga or a novel series, magazine articles, essays, craft patterns, etc. ...

Many fans, however, disagree with scanlations on the basis that there is a simple alternative that supports the creators of the manga: instead of editing the translations into digitized images, they can be placed online as a stand-alone text file which can be printed and used to read a legitimately purchased manga tankōbon. This was the norm in the earlier days of fandom; though it is still a copyright violation, it is a morally preferable option for many. 2nd English edition of InuYasha Vol. ... 2nd English edition of InuYasha Vol. ...

Process

The scanlation process involves several steps, starting with procurement of source material and ending with distribution. While the details of each step may vary from group to group, the basic procedures are essentially the same.

1. Scanning

Scanning, simply put, involves scanning the manga, thus transforming the printed page into an image which can easily be manipulated. The scanner (as the person in charge of scanning is called) is often the one that purchases the manga, which is generally either a manga magazine or a tankōbon. Manga scanned from a magazine is advantageous in that it provides the latest chapter of the series. However, the scans are often poor since manga magazines use low quality, newsprint-grade paper. Tankōbons, on the other hand, provide significantly superior scans at the cost of slower releases, since tankōbons are compilations of the serial magazine chapters. Due to these tradeoffs, a group might release an early low-quality (LQ) version based on a manga magazine and follow it up with a high-quality (HQ) tankōbon-based version. However this approach is labor-intensive, so most groups stick with a single source. Image scanning is the action or process of producing images from text documents, photographic film, photographic paper or other physical objects. ... Tankōbon ) is the Japanese term for a compilation volume of a particular series (such as a manga or a novel series, magazine articles, essays, craft patterns, etc. ... This article is about the magazine as a published medium. ... Piece of Letter paper Paper is a thin material produced by the amalgamation of plant fibres, which are subsequently held together without extra binder, largely by hydrogen bonds and fiber entanglement. ...

In order to get scans of better quality, some scanners unbind the magazine or tankōbon, e.g. by cutting the spine carefully. This allows the pages to be pressed firmly against the scanner bed, preventing the formation of shadowing artifacts that would normally occur in the middle due to the presence of a spine. Unbinding manga also allows scanning of two-page spreads that could be fused later during the editing step. Artifacts are visible corruption of the image or undesirable elements or defects in a video picture. ...

2. Translation

The second step in scanlation is the key step -- translation. The scans of the manga are forwarded to a translator, who translates the manga to a target language. Typically the source language is Japanese, but Chinese is a close second due to the large Chinese manga market and often greater availability of Chinese translators. In recent years, scanlators who translate Korean manga (manwha) into English have also emerged. The target language for most scanlations is English, followed by French. Scanlation groups in other languages such as German or Spanish exist but are of small number. Look up translate in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

As well as being the most important step, translation is also the most difficult. Ideally, the translator is fluent in both the source and target languages so that beyond conveying the basic meaning, s/he can recognize nuances and subtleties and find appropriate equivalents in the target language. Particularly if Japanese is the source, the translator should be familiar with the Japanese culture, as manga often contain cultural references and allusions. To compound translation difficulties further, Japanese manga is loaded with puns and wordplays that are essentially impossible to translate. Given all of these demands on the translator, it is not surprising that translations vary widely in quality. Some translations are too literal and are said to be too "stiff", whereas some translations are too liberal and lose the original meaning. A good translation balances the two extremes; it maintains fidelity to the original language (not too lax) while being easily comprehensible at the same time (not too literal). Japanese culture and language Japans isolation until the arrival of the Black Ships and the Meiji era produced a culture distinctively different from any other, and echoes of this uniqueness persist today. ... For other uses, see Culture (disambiguation). ... It has been suggested that dajare be merged into this article or section. ... Word play is a literary technique in which the nature of the words used themselves become part of the subject of the work. ...

Translators are usually the scarcest resource in the scanlation process, especially Japanese to English (J-E) translators. Given the wider availability of people fluent in both Chinese and English, some groups translate from the Chinese version of a manga instead of the original Japanese. This form of translation is ultimately inferior to a direct Japanese-English translation since some meaning is invariably lost in the first translation. The use of a Chinese-based translation is deemed acceptable in many cases simply because of the lack of J-E translators.

To facilitate greater understanding among scanlation readers, notes are sometime placed on the pages themselves (liner notes) or as an addendum at the end of a chapter. Liner notes are particularly useful in clarifying puns & wordplays that are lost in the translation. Sound effects (SFX) translations are also a form of liner notes and are positioned to correspond to particular panels. End notes on the other hand have more space and allow longer and more detailed explanations when necessary. Most scanlations do not have end notes. Look up addendum in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Sound effects or audio effects are artificially created or enhanced sounds, or sound processes used to emphasize artistic or other content of movies, video games, music, or other media. ...

3. Editing

After translation is finished, the text and scans are forwarded to the editor. The basic job of the editor is to remove the Japanese text from the scans and replace it with the corresponding English translation (this discussion assumes a J-E scanlation). This requires an image editor such as Adobe Photoshop (which is the overwhelming favorite). Adobe Photoshop, or simply Photoshop, is a highly overpriced graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Systems. ...

Scanlation groups have different approaches to editing. Some groups hand the unedited manga scans (called "raws") to a single person (the "editor"), who then is entirely in charge of producing the final scanlation. Other groups have more specialized subdivisions. For example, the raws can be first passed to a "cleaner" who processes the scans to make them more presentable. Afterwards, the scan is passed to an "editor" who removes the Japanese text and processes the scans so that they are ready for the "typesetter", who places the translation on the scans. Combinations of these roles are common, for example the scanner might also be the cleaner, the editor is the typesetter; in extreme cases one person might take on all roles (including translation) and release scanlations single-handedly. The specifics of the process are unique to the team or editor but several basic approaches can be pointed out. This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

A raw typically first undergoes leveling, in which the gray artifact on white areas (produced by scanning) is corrected and converted to white; the black areas (which tend to gray out in scanning) are also adjusted to a purer black. The raw might then be resized to the desired height and width. Of the two, the latter is more important because the horizontal dimension of the image should fit completely on the screen to prevent scrolling sideways. This is the reason most scanlations rarely exceed 1000 pixels in width, and it is often less. An editor might then correct any rotation artifacts (where the page is skewed to the left or right) and adjust the margins so that they are equal. After these preliminary steps have been completed, the translation can be edited in. Once all the editing processes are complete, the edits are saved in a specific image format. The JPEG format used to be the format of choice (and still is for color images) but it has been increasingly superseded by PNG, which compresses losslessly. In construction, level (as an adjective) is to horizontal what plumb is to vertical. ... This example shows an image with a portion greatly enlarged, in which the individual pixels are rendered as little squares and can easily be seen. ... The term margin has many meanings: In telecommunication, margin has the following meanings: In communications systems, the maximum degree of signal distortion that can be tolerated without affecting the restitution, without its being interpreted incorrectly by the decision circuit. ... In computing, JPEG (pronounced JAY-peg; IPA: ) is a commonly used standard method of compression for photographic images. ... A PNG image with an 8-bit transparency channel (top). ... Image compression is the application of data compression on digital images. ...

The last step is proofreading (or "proofing") in which all aspects of the edit e.g. grammar, spelling, font choices, text placement, etc. are reviewed. The end result is a final edit which is then packaged in a compressed format for convenience, usually either ZIP or RAR. Usually an additional credits page is included but some place credits within the manga itself, such as in the title page or at the margins. Proofreading means reading a proof copy of a text in order to detect and correct any errors. ... Grammar is the study of rules governing the use of language. ... Proper spelling is the writing of a word or words with all necessary letters and diacritics present in an accepted, conventional order. ... A font can mean: A member of a typeface family; or digital font - file format that encapsulates a typeface family in a database. ... The ZIP file format is a popular data compression and archival format. ... REDIRECT RAR (file format) ...

Scanlations differ very widely in editing quality. Some groups are content to release poorly-edited magazine-based scans filled with grammatical and spelling errors, while others release material of exceptional quality. These are often termed LQ (low-quality) and HQ (high-quality) releases respectively (the HQ label was originally created by Mangaproject to distinguish their scanlations). In this regard some general principles apply. First, LQ scanlations are typically released quickly while HQ ones are slower to come. This has mainly to do with the time it takes to do an HQ release, e.g. editing SFX, doing several proofreading cycles, etc., although using slower-released tankōbons is another factor.

Second, each group has its own measure of acceptable quality, which changes infrequently. That is why some scanlation teams can be consistently branded as "HQ groups" while others are regarded as "LQ groups." For some teams, it is probably not an issue of quality but speed that is their primary concern. This is especially true for multiple groups working on a single series. Here the goal is to beat others to a release, with quality only a secondary consideration. Before leaving the issue of quality, it is important to note that using scans from manga magazines does not necessarily condemn a release to be an LQ one. Magazine-based scans can actually be edited to make them nearly look indistinguishable from tankōbon-based ones. In summary, the factors that influence the quality of a scanlation would include the source of the scans, the skill of the editors, and the amount of time and effort the group is willing to spend on the manga.

One common misconception regarding the editing step of scanlation is that "it's easy and just about anybody can do it". For high-quality releases, this is quite far from the truth. Editing requires a variety of skills that are needed to handle the unique nature of manga. For example, Japanese text is commonly placed over artwork. Since Japanese characters are broader than average English characters (letters or numbers), placing English text over erased Japanese text will leave significant and glaring gaps. The editor corrects this by reconstructing the said areas, a skill often termed redrawing. Manga is also characterized by ubiquitous sound effects that often appear as large Japanese characters slapped over the artwork. Some groups translate and edit these SFX, but many do not because of the tedious nature in redrawing the backgrounds so obscured. Another example is two-page spreads, where continuous artwork is spread over two pages. Even if the pages of the spread are unbound from the spine and scanned properly, a perfect fit is almost impossible to achieve. The editor is then tasked to piece together the spread, using various tools such as the clone brush, bezier curves, etc. All of these image manipulations can only be appreciated if the original scan and final product are compared. Since most scanlation readers do not have access to the original scans, they often underestimate the extent of editing involved. In the mathematical subfield of numerical analysis a Bézier curve is a parametric curve important in computer graphics. ...

4. Distribution

The final step in the scanlation process involves delivering the release to the target audience (the "leechers"), and include direct download (HTTP), FTP, IRC, and Bittorrent (BT). Scanlation teams may offer direct downloads on their website or on mirror sites, and sites not maintained by scanlators also offer direct downloads. Since most teams also have IRC channels, they are utilized as an avenue for distribution via fileservers ("fserves") and bots. However transfers via IRC are often plagued by difficulties in sending and receiving, which stem from firewalls, hostmasks, and improperly-configured fserves. Manga scanlations are also infrequently available via FTP, but usually not as a primary distribution method. The information needed to access these FTPs is available only within IRC. Recently Bittorrent has emerged as a popular method of distributing releases and is advantageous in that downloaders can help by sharing their bandwidth. Given all these methods of distribution, manga scanlations are easily accessible to anyone with an internet connection and has the distinct advantage over anime in being much smaller in size. Single chapters may be as small as 2-3 megabytes and rarely exceed 15-20 MB; an average chapter usually falls within the 5-8 MB range. An audience is a group of people who participate in and experience or encounter a work of art, literature, theatre, music or academics in any medium. ... In pre-scientific medicine, leeching was an alternative form of blood letting in which bad blood would be removed via leeches instead of by bleeding. ... HTTP (for HyperText Transfer Protocol) is the primary method used to convey information on the World Wide Web. ... FTP or file transfer protocol is used to connect two computers over the Internet so that the user of one computer can transfer files and perform file commands on the other computer. ... IRC redirects here. ... This article is about the protocol. ... A website (or Web site) is a collection of web pages, typically common to a particular domain name or subdomain on the World Wide Web on the Internet. ... A mirror in computing is a direct copy of a data set. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... Direct Client-to-Client (DCC) is an IRC-related sub-protocol enabling peers to interconnect using an IRC server for handshaking in order to exchange files or perform non-relayed chats. ... Look up bot in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Firewall may refer to: Firewall (construction), a physical barrier inside a building or vehicle, designed to limit the spread of fire, heat and structural collapse Firewall (networking), a logical barrier designed to prevent unauthorized or unwanted communications between sections of a computer network Firewall (film), a 2006 action film written... Hostmask refers to an IRC address assigned to a client by the server. ... A megabyte is a unit of information or computer storage equal to approximately one million bytes. ...

References

• Scanlation Nation: Amateur Manga Translators Tell Their Stories - The Comics Journal

Footnotes

1. ↑  Manga Nation - SF Gate
2. ↑  http://mrcaxton.livejournal.com/11270.html

External links

• Manglish: Manga in English - English translations of Japanese indie manga appear by mousing over word balloons.
• Manga editing FAQ - Page describing the editing process of scanlation.
• Wikilation - Wiki containing scanlation processes. (Now open for public editing)

• Manga Jouhou - Scanlation groups and releases, unlicensed manga only.
• Daily Manga - Scanlation groups and releases, English and French scanlation groups (mostly English)
• Baka-Updates Manga - Database containing information on scanlation groups and releases.