How to Read Raw Manga in Japanese on iPhone (And Actually Understand It)

Your favorite manga just dropped a new chapter in Japan. The English translation? Two weeks away. Maybe longer. Maybe never.

Sound familiar?

The waiting game

Manga fans know the pain. Official translations lag behind by weeks or months. Scanlation groups do incredible work, but they’re volunteers with real lives — school, work, burnout. Some series get dropped entirely.

Meanwhile, the raw Japanese chapters are right there. Taunting you.

Why not just read the raws?

Most manga readers have thought about it. Just open the Japanese version and… figure it out?

The problem: Japanese text in manga is genuinely hard to parse. Handwritten fonts. Vertical text. Kanji without furigana. Sound effects baked into the art. Even with basic Japanese knowledge, it’s slow going.

Learning Japanese properly takes 1-2 years before you can comfortably read manga. That’s a big commitment when you just want to know what happens next in your series.

A middle ground: translate as you read

Here’s the thing — you don’t need to read Japanese fluently. You just need to understand what’s on the page right now.

PiP Screen Translate reads the Japanese text on your screen using OCR and shows you the translation in a floating overlay. Open your manga app, start the translation, and read along.

It’s not a replacement for learning Japanese or waiting for quality fan translations. But when you’re three chapters behind and can’t stand the spoilers anymore, it gets you there.

Works with popular manga apps

The translation overlay works with whatever manga reader you’re using:

Multi-source readers:

• Tachimanga
• Aidoku
• Paperback

Official Japanese apps:

• LINE Manga
• Piccoma
• Manga eBookJapan
• Shonen Jump+

Other readers:

• MangaDex (in browser)
• ComicGlass
• Any PDF/CBZ reader with downloaded raws

If the text is on your screen, it can be translated.

Tips for manga translation

A few things that help:

1. Zoom in on speech bubbles — cleaner text means better OCR accuracy
2. Go panel by panel — don’t try to translate a full page at once
3. Use for dialogue, not sound effects — stylized SFX are hard to parse
4. Cross-reference when confused — some jokes and wordplay won’t translate literally

The translation quality depends on text clarity. Clean digital manga works better than grainy scans. Simple fonts work better than stylized handwriting.

When to use it

Screen translation makes sense for:

• New chapters you can’t wait for
• Untranslated series that scanlators haven’t picked up
• Checking ahead when you’re caught up and curious
• Light novels and magazines where official translations don’t exist

For your all-time favorites, you’ll probably still want to read the polished fan translation or official release. But for everything else — the seasonal series, the obscure finds, the guilty pleasures — instant translation keeps you reading.

Get started

Download PiP Screen Translate, open your manga reader, and try it on a chapter you’ve already read in English. You’ll get a feel for how it handles different text styles.

Then next time a raw chapter drops and you can’t wait — you’ll be ready.

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Looking for more details? See our Manga Translator for iPhone page for compatible apps, tips, and how the overlay compares to browser-based translators like Mangra.