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 ELT FORUM 4 (1) (2015) 

 

Journal of English Language Teaching 
 

http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt 

 

 

ACCURACY OF ENGLISH-INDONESIAN SCANLATION OF DETECTIVE 

CONAN MANGA AS COMPARED TO ITS JAPANESE-INDONESIAN 

TRANSLATION 

 

Vina Darissurayya 

 

English Department. Faculty of Languages and Arts. State University of Semarang 

 

Aticle Info 

________________ 
Article History: 

Received in Juni 2015 

Approved in Juli 2015 

Published in Agustus 

2015 

________________ 
Keywords: 

Accuracy, translation, 

manga, scanlation. 

____________________ 

Abstract 
___________________________________________________________________ 
Popularity of scanlated manga urged me to do this research. There are three main problems in this study: (1) to 

find out how the accuracy of English-Indonesia manga scanlation, (2) to find out differences between online 

manga (scanlated manga), and printed manga (Indonesian officially published manga) and (3) to find out which 

more accurate between both compared to original Japanese manga. At the end, I found that that although the 

scanlation of detective Conan manga is accurate but the printed manga was more accurate. Still, further research 

needed to analyze scanlation more detail. As readers of manga, we should be smarter by reading printed manga 

rather than online manga. This way we will get the better translation and also we can give our appreciation 

toward the author. 

 

 

© 2015 Universitas Negeri Semarang 

 
 Correspondent Address:  

   B3 Building  FBS Unnes  

   Sekaran, Gunungpati, Semarang, 50229 

   E-mail: vinadaris@gmail.com 

ISSN 2252-6706 

 

 

 



 

Vina Darissurayya / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015) 

2 

INTRODUCTION 

 

In the era of technology, translation is 

no longer exclusively owned by professionals. 

People become more concern with translation 

even they can produce their own works despite 

the fact that they are not expert in that field. 

This situation results in the existence of 

‘unofficial’ translators. They work voluntarily, 

or unpaid. The works they chosen are often 

fictional, like movies and comics.  

This phenomenon makes me interested 

in analyzing a translation product of 

‘unofficial’ translators. The product here is a 

Japanese comic; or better known as manga. 

Mangas are popular culture throughout the 

world. A news article by Richard Susilo (2013) 

mentioned that in a television program, NTV 

Sekai Banzuke (World’s Rank), Indonesia 

placed 2nd for the biggest manga readers in the 

world. 

Unfortunately, although the popularity 

of manga keeps increasing, the industry itself is 

suffering. The cause is piracy. The existence of 

‘unofficial’ translators interferes official 

industry of manga because fans of manga can 

easily read their desired manga via internet. 

Readers prefer reading manga online than 

buying it officially because of two reasons: (1) 

reading manga online is free of charge, so it is 

cheaper than buying it, (2) online manga 

releases manga faster than the one officially 

published.  

Larson (1984) states, that translation is 

basically a change of forms. The forms here 

refer to surface structure of a language, parts 

which are observable by human senses. The 

steps of translation are reading the source text 

as well as comprehending it. Without 

translators’ knowledge and understanding of 

the source text, it will not be possible to 

produce a good translation. In translating, 

translators will also face another problem 

called translatability, the possibility of certain 

text to be translated. Still, translators can make 

some adjustment as long as he or she 

understands what the purpose of the text is 

(Munday and Hatim, 2014). Translation is an 

important process of replacing and 

reproducing the messages from a text in a 

source language into a target language. The 

most important point of translation is finding 

the equivalence. 

The process of scanlation is almost the 

same as common translation. The following 

chart summarizes the complete process of 

scanlation (Ratti, 2013: 49).  

 

Chart 1 

The Modules of the Scanlating Process 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cleaning

Translating

TypesettingEditing

Quality 
Checking

Scanning

Content Content 



 

Vina Darissurayya / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015) 

3 

 

 

My early observation, it is rare for 

Indonesian scanlation group to scanlate from 

original Japanese mangas. They usually take 

the work from English scanlated version and 

translate it into bahasa. It happens because 

many translators in the group do not 

understand Japanese, so it is difficult for them 

to translate from original version. This 

circumstance shows that Indonesian scanlation 

group does not have direct connection with 

Japanese. This situation raises doubts on the 

accuracy of the translation. That is why I want 

to know the quality of English-Indonesian 

scanlation of a manga, in this case is Meitantei 

Conan (Detective Conan), by Indonesian fans. 

Then, I also want to compare this scanlation 

with the official published one in order to 

know where the differences occur. The last, I 

would like to know the quality of those 

differences if it is compared to the original 

Japanese version. 

 

METHOD 

 

This study is a qualitative descriptive 

research. In this study, I investigate the 

accuracy of English-Indonesian Detective 

Conan manga scanlation as well as how if it is 

compared to official translation of Japanese-

Indonesian. I also want to know which one is 

more accurate if compared to Japanese 

version. The data consisted of three languages, 

Japanese, English and, bahasa and only simple 

sentences were used. The result of the analysis 

will be described to answer the problems stated 

in question statements. 

 The object of the study is a manga 

entitled Detective Conan which was written by 

Gosho Aoyama. I chose 3 chapters from the 

manga, chapter 809-chapter 811. The data 

were taken from The English scanlation chapter 

809-811 were taken from 

http://mangafox.me/manga/detective_conan/. 

The Indonesian scanlation chapter 809-811 

were taken from 

http://mangaku.web.id/detectiv-conan-bahasa-

indonesia-terbaru/. The original Japanese 

manga volume 77 was taken from 

http://rawcs.net/3084.html. The printed version 

was taken from “Detective Conan” volume 77 

published by Elex Media Komputindo, 

Gramedia Group.   

 To analyse the accuracy, I used 

accuracy indicators proposed by Nababan et. 

al 2012. There are 3 categories, accurate, less 

accurate and inaccurate. I asked help from 

lecturers from English Department and 

Japanese Department to rate English-

Indonesia scanlation and Japanese-Indonesian 

translation respectively. Here is the 

instrument: 

 

Table 1 

Instrument to Rate Translation Accuracy 

Scale Indicators Result 

3 The meaning of words, phrases and clauses from 

source language are translated accurately into 

target language; without any distortion. 

Accurate Translation 

2 Some meanings of words, phrases, and clauses 

have been accurately translated into target 

language. However, there exist some meaning 

distortions which disturb message unity. 

Less Translation 

1 The meanings of words, phrases and clauses from 

source language are not translated accurately into 

target language.  

Inaccurate Translation 

 



 

Vina Darissurayya / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015) 

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RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 

 

1. The Accuracy Analysis of English-

Indonesian Scanlation of Detective 

Conan Manga Case of Froth Steam 

and Smoke 

a. Accurate Translation 

The first assessor, English department 

lecturer, found 428 dialogues belonged to this 

accurate group. It was 72,8% from the whole 

data while The second rater found 428 

accurate data. It was 72,8% from the total data 

found. The translator mostly used literal 

translation method and literal technique of 

translation. In this scanlation accurate 

translations mostly came into being because 

the source texts’ grammatical pattern was 

similar to target texts’ grammatical pattern like 

the examples below: 

 

ST File 809 Traces of Having Been in The Room 

TT File 809 Jejak Pernah Berada di Ruangan 

BT File 809 Traces of Having been in The Room 

 

The first example was the chapter’s title. 

As can be seen, the form of both source text 

and target text were similar. The translator did 

not need to adjust anything, he only translated 

the words and phrases according to its 

functions, like the way literal translation 

method was. In the first example, the 

translator also translated tenses of ST (source 

text) by adding the word “pernah” to replace 

the present perfect tenses. 

ST You sure have a lot of them… 

TT Kau punya banyak, ya… 

BT You have a lot, don’t you… 

 

 

The source text contained impressed 

feeling of the speaker with the use of “sure”. 

The translator successfully conveyed this 

feeling by replacing “sure” into “ya” at the end 

of the sentence. In addition he also removed 

“them”, referred to the keys owned by Mr. 

Sodesaki, from the translation. Here he did not 

only use literal technique but also 

compensation and reduction. If the translator 

only used literal technique the translation 

would be “Kamu sungguh punya kunci banyak. 

(You really have many keys)”, readers would 

not be able to get the feeling of the speaker.  

b. Less Accurate Translation 

The first assessor found that 6,4% of the 

dialogues in this study were not translated 

accurately.  There were 38 data belonged to 

this category. In addition, the second rater 

found 39 data belonged to inaccurate 

translation. It was 6,6% from the whole text. 

Here is one of the examples: 

ST It’s not like I’m a kid after all… 

TT Sepertinya aku bukan anak kecil… 

BT It seemed I am not a little kid… 

 

The translation above belonged to 

inaccurate translation. Text actually had the 

purpose to show that the speaker’s strong 

argument stating that she was not a kid. 

However, it was translated into “It seemed I 

am not a little kid” which was not filled with 

confidence of the speaker. The target text will 

be accurate if it was translated into “Lagipula 

aku kan bukan anak kecil”. If “Sepertinya aku 

bukan anak kecil” was translated into English, it 

would be “It seems that I am not a kid.” The 

message was not the same as the one stated in 

the source text.  

c. Inaccurate Translation 

In this category, the first rater found 

about 38 data or 6.4%. Not much different, the 



 

Vina Darissurayya / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015) 

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second rate found 39 dialogues or 6.6% from 

the whole data belonged to this category. The 

following is the example: 

ST It went out… 

TT Tidak mau keluar…  

BT It didn’t want to come out… 

 

The sentence above was translated 

inaccurately. “It went out” in this context 

belonged to a cigarette. The speaker, Mr. 

Sodesaki, was desperate because his lit 

cigarette had gone out so it would be difficult 

for him to proof his alibi. If it was translated 

into “tidak mau keluar” or “it didn’t want to 

come out” readers will not be able to 

understand the meaning behind the dialogue. 

The appropriate translation should be “sudah 

mati”, which meant that the cigarette went out, 

“rokoknya sudah mati (the cigarette went out”. 

It will be more correct in Indonesian language. 

 

2. The Differences Found  in 

Comparing the Scanlated Version and 

the Official Version of Detective 

Conan Manga  

The second research problem in this 

study was how the difference between English-

Indonesian scanlation and official Japanese-

Indonesian translation of Detective Conan 

manga is. From the 586 dialogues found in the 

English-Indonesian scanlation version of 

Detective Conan manga, I found 120 dialogues 

different from the official Indonesian version 

of the manga, it was 20.5% in total. In order to 

make it easier in addressing the comparison, I 

will call scanlated version as “online manga” 

while the officially published version as 

“printed manga”. The differences found in the 

sentences’ form, meaning and word chosen.  

 These are some discussion of those 

differences: 

OM  Akulah yang akan mengirimmu ke 

kuburanmu terlebih dahulu. 

I will send you to your grave 

first 

PM Akan kubuat kau merasakan 

pembalasanku 

I will make you get my 

revenge 

 

In the first example, the sentence was 

found in an e-mail sent by the victim before he 

passed away. This e-mail contained a 

challenge to its reader. The preceding sentence 

in this e-mail was “if you can kill me, come 

and try it”. The message found in online 

Manga was that the sender (president 

Katsumoto) swearing that he would kill the 

one who dare trying to kill him while the 

published version implied that the sender want 

to take a revenge to the reader if he/she dare 

to do something to them. Although generally 

the purpose of the sentences was to threaten its 

reader but the sentences were too different. 

Sending to grave in OM (online manga) meant 

to kill, so before the e-mail target can kill him, 

president Katsumoto promised that he will kill 

him first. On the other hand, the sentence’s 

implication in PM (published manga) was 

president Katsumoto would take action if the 

e-mail target indeed killed him. The situations 

were not the same. 

OM Karena aku yang melupakan 

sesuatu, akukan bisa pulang 

sendiri dan mengambilnya 

sendiri 

Since I was the one who forgot 

thing, I can go back alone and 

take it alone. 

PM Biar aku sendiri yang 

mengambil barangku yang 

ketinggalan 

Let me alone who take my left 

good. 



 

Vina Darissurayya / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015) 

6 

 

The keywords for the first example were 

left, alone, go back. In OM the sentence was 

longer than the PM version. The sentence on 

OM described in the detail the condition of the 

speaker at that time. She explained the reason 

why she had to go back by herself. The second 

sentence did not explain her reason but only 

her purpose of going back. In addition the OM 

sentence did not ask for permission while the 

PM gave asking permission vibe. That was 

why those sentences were considered different 

even though it had same keywords. 

 

3. The Accuracy Analysis of Scanlated 

Version and Official Version 

Differences Compare to Its Original 

Japanese version 

 

In the last research problems, fifty 

dialogues from printed manga were rated 

accurate while only 22 dialogues from online 

manga were given the same score. The 

differences were more than 50%. Moreover, 

the percentage of accurate translation found in 

printed manga was 41.7 % from all data. There 

was only one datum that was given the same 3 

score by both raters, data number 78. 

OJ 高木刑事

眠そうだ

ね．．． 

You look 

sleepy 

detective 

Keiji, 

don’t 

you? 

The dialogue occurred was said by 

Conan after he saw detective Takagi yawning. 

In original Japanese, the meaning of the 

sentence was that Conan was wondering if 

detective Takagi was sleepy.  If we translate ”

眠そう” (nemusou) literally, it will be “look 

sleepy”.  In printed manga or Indonesian 

publish version, it was translated literally but 

in online manga it was translated as “tired”. It 

was similar to the English scanlated version. 

According to both raters ”眠そう” can also be 

translated into tired, since both  can be 

expressed to describe the reasons of detective 

Takagi’s yawn. That was why both 

translations were accurate. Unfortunately, this 

was the only dialogue that was given same 

scores despite its difference. 

 Although some data from online 

manga were more accurate than printed manga, 

the sentences were not so natural. In the 

following example the online manga was more 

accurate than printed manga, the sentences in 

printed manga were more natural. 

 

OJ 彼女の所属事務所の関係者って

事で参列したんだけどね．．． 

However we came as people 

related to that woman’s agency 

OM Kami hadir sebagai orang yang 

berhubungan dengan manajemen 

perusahaanya… 

We came as people related to 

her management company… 

PM   Kami mengambil tempat di barisan 

orang-orang di kantor agensinya…  

We took place in the row of 

people in her agency company 

  

OM Paman 

Takagi 

kelelahan, 

ya? 

Uncle 

Takagi 

tired, 

don’t 

you? 

PM  Kak 

Takagi 

ngantuk?  

Are you 

sleepy 

brother 

Takagi? 



 

Vina Darissurayya / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015) 

7 

From the original Japanese’s back 

translation it contained the information that 

the three suspects, Mr. Ogino, Mr. Sodesaki 

and Ms. Tsukihara, went to the actress’ funeral 

hiding their identities. They even pretended to 

be the people from actress’ agency. In online 

manga translation the word “agency” was 

changed into “management company”. 

Although it was translated into different word, 

the purpose was still the same. Both words 

referred to a company which managed the 

activities of actors and actresses. In addition, 

the information delivered by the online manga 

version was the same as the original Japanese 

version. On the other hand, in printed version 

was a less accurate translation. Even though 

the translation of “agency” was correctly used, 

the whole sentence did not deliver the same 

message as the original Japanese version. The 

printed manga version only explained that the 

three suspects sat next to people from the 

actress’ agency without stating the fact they 

were pretending to hide the fact they worked 

for the magazine which pushed the actress to 

suicide. 

 Another example was an accurate 

datum from printed manga: 

 

OJ でも、興味があるのは殺しではな

く謎解きの方がですけどね．．． 

Online Manga But, I am more 

interested not in the murder, 

but to solve the mystery… 

PM Tetapi aku lebih tertarik pada 

pemecahan misterinya, bukan 

pembunuhan 

But, I am more 

interested in mystery solving, 

not in the murder 

OM Tetapi daripada pembunuhan, 

minantku yang sesungguhnya terletak 

pada pemecahan teka-teki…  

But rather than murder, 

my real interest was in the 

puzzle soving… 

 

Subaru told the sentence to Haibara. He 

meant to tell her that in spite of his well 

knowledge about murder, he was not 

interested in it. He did it only for the sake of 

his interest in solving mystery. Using almost 

similar grammatical patter, the translation 

from printed manga successfully conveyed that 

message, no omission or addition of 

information. On the other hand, the 

translation from online Manga was less 

accurate. The reason lied on the use of “teka-

teki (puzzle)” to replace ”謎解き(nazotoki)” 

or “mystery” in English. Even though “謎 

(nazo)”  can also mean riddle or puzzle,   in 

this context it was not a good idea to use those 

word. It was because what Subaru meant was 

not only a piece of riddle but the accumulation 

of hints that found in the scene to solve a case 

so “mystery” would be more appropriate. 

 

CONCLUSIONS 

 

In conclusion, even though the 

translation of online manga which is translated 

from English is accurate it is still less accurate 

than printed manga. Moreover, even some 

online manga data are more accurate than 

printed manga, the language used in printed 

manga is more natural. There is the possibility 

that the translator of printed manga takes some 

consideration into naturalness of the language 

so he makes some adjustment in the 

translation which decreases its accuracy. 

Printed comic which is officially published and 

translated from the original Japanese version 

have more accurate data than the online comic 

if it is compared to original Japanese version. 

  I also have some suggestions to give 

for anyone who wants to use this study. The 

first suggestion is to do further analysis to 



 

Vina Darissurayya / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015) 

8 

investigate the accuracy of Japanese-English 

scanlation of Detective Conan manga. The 

second one is to do the same analysis but with 

more raters to check if there will be any 

difference from this one and also what kind of 

techniques used in the translation process. At 

the end, the writer would like to suggest manga 

readers buying the original published version 

of manga rather than reading it online since 

online comics have many inaccuracies which 

make the messages of the manga itself gone. By 

reading online manga, you show your 

disrespect toward the original author.  

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

 

This research can be completed well 

because of the amount of support from many 

people. I would like to express my biggest 

thank to Dr. Issy Yuliasri, M.Pd. who has 

provided me with careful input, guidance, and 

feedbacks. Furthermore, thanks to Drs. 

Laurentius Elyas Nugraha, MA., and Seful 

Bahri, S.Pd., M.Pd., who are my first and 

second examiners, for the meaningful 

corrections and suggestions. My special honor 

expressed to all my lecturers of English 

Department who had helped me in various 

ways. Thanks also to my friends who 

accompanied me in many situations.  

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

Gosho, A. 1994. Detective Conan Volume 77. 

Translated by M. 2014, Jakarta: Elex Media 

Komputindo. 

 

Hatim, B and Munday, J. 2004. Translation: An 

Advance Resource Book. Routledge 

Abingdon. 

 

Larson, M.1984. Meaning-Based Translation: A 

Guide to Cross-Language Equivalence. 

Boston : University Press of America. 

 

Nababan, M. 2012. Pengembangan Model 

Penilaian Kualitas Terjemahan. Kajian 

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Richard, S. 2013. Indonesia Peringkat ke-2 

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Available at 

http://www.tribunnews.com/lifestyle/201

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[accessed: 20/10/2014] 

 

S. Ratti.2013. Scanlators As Producers Fan 

Participatory Practice Online: Free and 

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