How to Translate Chinese Manhua to English (No Chinese Needed, No Licence Required)

The easiest way to translate Chinese manhua to English is to open the raw chapter on Kuaikan, Tencent Comics or Bilibili Manhua and run Madomi over it. Madomi is a real-time manga translator by Pawaka Labs that reads the Chinese text inside every speech bubble and overlays the English on the page as you scroll. It’s the method that matters most for manhua, because for most titles there is no English release to wait for. Last checked on 13 October 2026.

Manhua has a different problem from manga and manhwa. With Japanese and Korean comics, the question is usually “how far behind is the English release?” With Chinese comics, the honest answer for most series is “there isn’t one”. Bilibili Comics, the biggest licensed English platform, closed in February 2024 and took its translations with it. What’s left is a patchwork, and the catalogue in China keeps growing faster than anyone can license it.

So the raw is the version that exists. Here’s how to read it in English, step by step, plus what Chinese specifically does to a translator and how to get around it.

Why Chinese is a different OCR problem

A manhua chapter looks like a webtoon: usually a tall vertical strip, scrolled on a phone, with the dialogue drawn into the image. That already defeats the browser’s translate button, which only sees HTML text and leaves every bubble in Chinese. But Chinese adds three things Japanese and Korean don’t:

• No spaces between words. Korean puts spaces between words and Japanese mixes scripts, which gives OCR clues about where one word ends. Written Chinese is a continuous run of characters, so the tool has to segment the sentence itself before it can translate it. Get the split wrong and the meaning changes.
• Two scripts. Mainland platforms publish in simplified characters; Taiwan and Hong Kong use traditional. Same language, different glyphs, and an OCR model trained on one stumbles on the other.
• Dense jargon. Manhua skews heavily toward web-novel adaptations: cultivation, xianxia, system and rebirth stories. Those come with invented ranks, sect names, technique names and four-character idioms that a general translator renders literally, and differently every time it sees them.

The first two are solved by OCR built for comics in all three languages, which is what Madomi uses. The third is solved by a glossary, which is the step most people skip. More on that below.

Where to get the raw manhua first

Translate a legal copy. The Chinese platforms open in an ordinary browser from most countries, and free chapters usually need no account:

• Kuaikan Manhua (kuaikanmanhua.com): the biggest modern platform, mobile-first, strong in romance and drama. Signs you up with an email.
• Tencent Comics (ac.qq.com): the largest catalogue, home of the action, fantasy and cultivation epics that get donghua adaptations.
• Bilibili Manhua (manga.bilibili.com): the full Chinese library behind the old English service, with a clean reader.
• Manke Zhan (mkzhan.com): smaller, from the publisher of one of China’s best-selling comic magazines.

Our guide to the best manhua raw sites covers each platform’s free model and login quirks, and there are walkthroughs for Kuaikan and Tencent Comics specifically. Skip the aggregators: they’re lifting pages from these platforms anyway, with ads and missing chapters on top.

Check the English services first, too. INKR, MangaToon, WebComics and Tappytoon each carry a selection of licensed manhua, and if your series is there, read it there. It’s just that the selection is small, and why most manhua never gets translated comes down to arithmetic: China publishes more chapters a week than any English publisher can license, translate and letter.

How to translate Chinese manhua to English in your browser

The desktop method. The Chinese platforms all have proper web readers, and a tall strip is comfortable on a big screen.

1. Install Madomi for Chrome or Firefox. It’s free and comes with 100 translation credits a month.
2. Open the chapter on kuaikanmanhua.com, ac.qq.com or manga.bilibili.com.
3. Click the Madomi icon in your toolbar, set the source language to Chinese and the output to English. Once; it remembers.
4. Turn translation on. The strip re-renders with English drawn over each bubble and caption, matching the original’s position and size.
5. Scroll. Each section is translated as it comes into view, so a long chapter doesn’t make you wait for the whole thing.

One credit covers one translated image. The original art stays underneath, so you can toggle the overlay off and see the Chinese again if a line reads oddly.

Madomi is the highest-rated manga translator extension on the Chrome Web Store, at 4.8 out of 5 from 391 ratings with 20,000+ users. For manhua the part that matters is the segmentation: whether the OCR splits a line of characters into the right words before translating. That’s the difference between a readable chapter and a confusing one.

How to translate manhua on your phone

Most manhua is read on a phone, and the phone method wraps a reader around the same translator. Madomi for Android and iOS is a full manga reader with translation built in.

1. Install Madomi and open the chapter. Browse the platform in the app’s built-in browser, add it as an online source, or import a CBZ, ZIP or PDF if you have one.
2. Tap translate. The chapter is translated and cached, so re-reading it costs nothing.
3. Read in long strip mode for the vertical-scroll titles, or a paged mode for manhua drawn as pages.

The reader is free. The free plan gives you 100 credits a month, one credit per translated image, and Madomi Premium removes the limit.

The step that fixes cultivation manhua: the glossary

This is the part worth slowing down for, because it’s what separates a manhua that reads well from one that reads like a riddle.

A cultivation series might have a protagonist called 林动, a sect called 青云宗, and a ranking system of nine stages with names like 筑基 and 金丹. A general translator will give you “Lin Dong” in one bubble and “Forest Move” in the next, “Qingyun Sect” and then “Blue Cloud Sect”, “Foundation Establishment” and then “Build Base”. Each one is a defensible translation; the problem is getting a different one every chapter.

Madomi has a per-series glossary for exactly this. Open the series, add the character names, their nicknames and genders, and the handful of terms the story leans on, and the AI follows that list from then on. You can import the cast from AniList in a tap if the series is listed there. Ten minutes of setup on chapter one, and the next three hundred chapters stay consistent.

Rules of thumb for what to pin:

• Names in pinyin, the way the English fan community already writes them, so you can follow discussions.
• Sect and faction names either fully translated or fully pinyin; don’t mix.
• Cultivation stages translated once. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul, whatever convention you like, as long as it’s one convention.
• The protagonist’s gender if their name is ambiguous. This one matters more than it sounds.

What to expect from the translation

With the glossary set, dialogue reads cleanly. Modern AI translation is strong at conversational Chinese, and Madomi translates the strip with its surrounding lines, which helps it pick the right reading of a short, context-dependent phrase. Three things will still be rough:

• Four-character idioms (chengyu). A phrase like 画蛇添足 means “overdoing it”, but a literal pass gives you “draw a snake and add feet”. You’ll see a few per chapter; they’re usually guessable from context.
• Sound effects lettered into the art. Sometimes read, sometimes not.
• Measure words and honorific titles like 师兄, 师姐, 前辈. Expect them kept as “Senior Brother” and “Senior” or dropped, depending on context. Neither is wrong.

For a typical action or romance manhua, you’ll follow the story without noticing the tool. For a dense cultivation epic, set the glossary first and you’ll notice it about once a chapter.

The manual route, and why you probably don’t want it

For completeness, this is what a scanlation group does to produce an English chapter other people can read:

1. Pull the full-resolution strip.
2. Transcribe or OCR the Chinese.
3. Translate the script, usually a translator plus a proofreader who knows the genre’s terms.
4. Clean the strip: erase the Chinese from every bubble and redraw any art under it.
5. Typeset the English back in, matching fonts.
6. Quality-check and export.

Hours per chapter for a practised group, and the right process for publishing. For reading, it’s absurd, which is why using Google Translate one screenshot at a time feels so tedious: you’re doing a cut-down version of it by hand, with none of the consistency.

Verdict: if you’re reading rather than publishing, skip all of it and let Madomi draw the English over the strip.

Translating manhua: the options side by side

	Madomi	Browser translate button	Google Translate camera	Manual scanlation
Translates text inside the images	Yes	No	Yes, one screenshot at a time	Yes
Handles a tall vertical strip	Yes, as you scroll	No	No, needs cropping	Yes
Simplified and traditional Chinese	Both	Both, menus only	Both	Both
Keeps names and cultivation terms consistent	Yes, per-series glossary	No	No	Yes, by a human
Works on Kuaikan, Tencent, Bilibili	Yes	Menus only	Via screenshots	Via downloads
Phone and desktop	Both	Both	Phone only	Desktop only
Time per chapter	Same as reading it	Instant, but useless	20 to 40 minutes	Hours
Cost	100 free credits monthly, Premium for unlimited	Free	Free	Your evening

The same method works for Japanese manga and Korean manhwa; only the source language setting changes. For how the OCR and overlay actually work under the hood, see the real-time manga translation explainer.

Frequently asked questions

What is the easiest way to translate Chinese manhua to English?

Use Madomi, a real-time manga translator by Pawaka Labs. It runs as a Chrome and Firefox extension and as an Android and iOS app. Open a raw chapter on Kuaikan, Tencent Comics or Bilibili Manhua, turn Madomi on, and it reads the Chinese text in every speech bubble with OCR built for comics and overlays the English on the page as you scroll.

Can Google Translate translate manhua?

One screenshot at a time. Google Translate’s camera mode reads a bubble you photograph, but most manhua is a tall vertical strip, so a chapter becomes dozens of crops. It also has no memory between crops, so a character’s name or a sect’s name comes out differently each time. Madomi translates the whole strip in place and keeps names consistent with a per-series glossary.

Does the method work for both simplified and traditional Chinese?

Yes. The mainland platforms (Kuaikan, Tencent, Bilibili) publish in simplified characters, and Taiwanese and Hong Kong platforms use traditional. Madomi reads both; set the source language to Chinese and it handles either script.

Where do I get raw Chinese manhua to translate?

From the official Chinese platforms: Kuaikan Manhua, Tencent Comics, Bilibili Manhua and Manke Zhan. Free chapters open without an account from most countries, and the newest chapters sit behind a small per-chapter unlock. Avoid aggregator sites. Our manhua raw sites guide goes platform by platform.

Is machine translation good enough for cultivation and xianxia manhua?

For the dialogue, yes. The genre’s jargon is the rough part: cultivation stages, sect titles, and four-character idioms come out literal unless you pin them. Madomi’s per-series glossary lets you fix the names and key terms once, and the AI follows that list for every chapter after.

Does Madomi translate manhua into languages other than English?

Yes. The source can be Chinese, Japanese, Korean or other languages and the output can be any of a wide range of target languages. The app interface itself comes in 26 languages. Set your language once and every chapter comes out in it.

The licence isn’t coming. The chapter is already out.

Three hundred chapters are sitting on Tencent right now, free, and nobody is going to translate them for you. Install Madomi, set the glossary once, and start scrolling.

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