In manga circles, raw means the untouched original: Japanese pages straight from the magazine or volume, before a fan group has translated and typeset them. If you're caught up on a series, raws are often the only way forward. The next official English release might be months out; a scanlation might never come.
You don't have to wait. Here's how to read raws in English yourself.
What "raw" actually means
- Raw: original Japanese scans, no translation.
- Scanlation: a fan translation typeset back onto the pages. Free, but slow and inconsistent.
- Official: a licensed English release. Best quality, but often far behind Japan.
Reading raws in English bridges the gap: you get the story now, in your language, without depending on a fan group's schedule. For the full breakdown of speed, accuracy and legality between the other two options, see scanlation versus official translation.
The reader's method
The old way was painful: crop a bubble, paste it into a translator, read a caption, repeat. The modern way keeps you on the page.
- Bring the page in. Screenshot your reader, photograph a physical page, or import an image or PDF.
- Solve bubbles in place. Tap a speech bubble and the Japanese becomes English right there, fitted to the shape. No captions, no context-switching.
- Scroll and repeat. For vertical webtoons, solve bubbles as they come into view. Reading Korean raws specifically? See the app versus browser extension comparison.
Why "in place" matters for raws
Raw pages are dense. Action scenes throw ten bubbles and a fistful of sound effects at you per page. If every translation lands in a separate box, you lose track of who said what. Replacing the Japanese inside its own bubble keeps the choreography intact: you read it like a finished chapter.
This is the whole difference between a general translator and a manga translator: one tells you what a bubble says, the other lets you read the page.
Reading raws to learn Japanese
Raws are a great study tool because you're motivated: you want to know what happens next. Turn on a view that keeps the romaji next to the English and you'll start recognising common words (the "wait!", "let's go", "impossible") without trying. Short lines and heavy repetition make manga one of the gentler ways in.
Practise on a page nobody owns
Before you point this at the series you're forty chapters into, try it on something you're free to keep. Comics in the public domain and under open licences read exactly the same way under a bubble translator, and Yomi ships a free library of them for that purpose. Import, tap, read: the Japanese goes and the English arrives inside the same bubble, sized to the space, with the drawing untouched.
And when an official English version exists, buy it. Self-translating raws is for the chapters the industry hasn't reached yet.