外刊精读 | 日本漫画正在被韩国网络漫画所取代

今天是小芳老师陪你精读外刊的第37天

难度指数7级（共8级）

读前想想，下面内容用英语怎么说？

1. 日本漫画 2. 网络漫画 3. 手艺 4. 模仿

第一步：泛读原文（盲听1遍，泛读1遍，对照文本听1遍）

LEE HYUN-SEOK grew up in South Korea addicted to Japanese manga series such as “Dragon Ball” and “Slam Dunk”. As soon as he could, he emigrated to Tokyo to build a successful career as amanga artist and editor. Then in the early 2000s came “webtoons”, a South Korean cartoon innovation optimised for smartphones. Mr Lee was at first unimpressed. Compared with manga’s inventive graphic styles and sophisticated plots, he found webtoons crude and superficial. “I thought: ‘Anybody can make this’.”

Yet Japanese mangais being eclipsed by Korean webtoons. Last year the mangaprint market shrank by 2.3% to ¥265bn ($1.9bn). The size of the global webtoons market was meanwhile valued at $3.7bn—and projected to reach $56bn by 2030. Mangais gravitating to digital slowly, in part because it is still designed for print, so awkward to read on smartphones. The letters tend to be too small and the way the panels are laid out requires constant zooming in and out. Seeing which way the wind was blowing, Mr Lee abandoned manga for the webtoon industry in 2014.

Though webtoons such as “Itaewon Class” and “Solo Levelling” have become popular among Japanese consumers, most Japanese publishers have stuck doggedly to manga. “The Japanese industry is very conservative,” sighs Mr Lee. “There’s a strong belief that it’s better to stick with precedent.” The manga industry’s business model, in which stories are first published in weekly magazines and then in books, has hardly changed since the 1960s. Their format is also sacrosanct. Japanese manga hew to unique templates which require special knowledge of readers, such as the order in which panels must be read. “The only people who know how to read manga are Japanese, Koreans and geeks across the world,” says Iwamoto Keita, who runs a cartoon studio. Webtoons have grown so fast, in part, because they can be read more easily and intuitively. It is tempting to see the way manga.

Traditionalists are ceding the global cartoon market to South Korean innovators as symbolic of a broader malaise: the sluggishness and introspection of too many Japanese firms. Other recent South Korean exports, such as the Netflix sensation “Squid Game” and BTS, a boy band, have taken the world by storm thanks to the same combination of innovation and smart marketing behind webtoons. Meanwhile, the “Cool Japan” strategy of the government in Tokyo, intended to emulate that Korean success, has been a flop. Having run up huge losses, it may soon be abandoned.

And yet, by sticking to what it does best, the manga industry has at least maintained its strengths. Its complicated layouts can convey sophisticated narratives. And many manga are artistic wonders, with designs manipulated at the millimetre level. Witness the intricate ink drawings in “Vagabond”, an epic martial-arts series, or the surrealist illustrations of “Berserk”, a medieval fantasy. By contrast, complex plots with dramatic twists are hard to convey in webtoons, which can display only a limited number of words. “I doubt webtoons would ever trump manga in terms of quality,” says Mr Iwamoto.

With its strong stories and craftsmanship, manga maintains a loyal domestic audience, which gives publishers little motivation to innovate or change. Growth in their core business may be flagging; yet they can still find opportunities to boost revenues through anime adaptations, or by collaborating with businesses that create manga-themed merchandise. Shueisha, the publisher that produced “Demon Slayer”, a recent hit manga and anime, had record sales in 2021. “There’s not much of a sense of crisis among Japanese publishers,” observes Nakayama Atsuo, an entertainment-industry expert.

Some still fret about the future. Japan’s manga fans are, like all its population, ageing. The average reader of the Weekly Shonen Magazine, a manga anthology for children (shonen means “young boy”) launched in 1959, is now over 30. “Manga could end up as old people’s culture,” warns Mr Lee. “Children these days are scrolling through webtoons on their smartphones. Why not make something that suits their taste?”

第二步：精读原文（精读1遍，对照文本听1遍，精读1遍）

读原文（精读1遍，对照文本听1遍）

01

LEE HYUN-SEOK grew up in South Korea addicted to Japanesemangaseries such as “Dragon Ball” and “Slam Dunk”. As soon as he could, heemigratedto Tokyo to build a successful career as a manga artist and editor. Then in the early 2000s came “webtoons”, a South Korean cartoon innovation optimised for smartphones. Mr. Lee was at first unimpressed. Compared with manga’s inventive graphic styles and sophisticated plots, he found webtoons crude and superficial. “I thought: ‘Anybody can make this’.”

1.manga: 日本漫画e.g. Known as manga, Japanese comic art has grown into a cult here. 日本漫画艺术在这里十分风靡。

2.emigrate: leave one’s country of residence for a new one 移居；移居国外

• The men emigrate to work as seaman.

• 这些男人移居国外当海员。

3.webtoon: 网络漫画；e.g. Most webtoon serials are published on major Internet portals free of charge. 大部分网络漫画系列都在大型门户网站免费发布。

翻译：李贤硕在韩国长大，沉迷于日本漫画系列，如《龙珠》和《大灌篮》。他一有机会就移民到东京，作为漫画家和编辑建立了成功的事业。然后在21世纪初，"网络漫画 "出现了，这是韩国为智能手机优化的卡通创新。李先生起初不以为然。与漫画的创造性的图形风格和复杂的情节相比，他发现网络漫画粗糙而肤浅，他说，"我想：'任何人都可以做这个' "。

02

Yet Japanese manga is beingeclipsedby Korean webtoons. Last year the manga print market shrank by 2.3% to ¥265bn ($1.9bn). The size of the global webtoons market was meanwhile valued at $3.7bn—and projected to reach $56bn by 2030. Manga isgravitatingto digital slowly, in part because it is still designed for print, so awkward to read on smartphones. The letters tend to be too small and the way thepanels are laid out requires constant zooming in and out. Seeing which way the wind was blowing, Mr. Lee abandoned manga for the webtoon industry in 2014.

1.eclipse:使黯然失色, e.g. It is notable that she never allowed the men in her life to eclipse her. 很显然，她从不允许她生活中的男性使她黯然失色。

2.gravitate :向.....移动, 吸引 e.g. Many young people gravitate to the cities in search of work.许多年轻人被吸引到城里找工作。

3.panel: 方格板块, e.g. One of the glass panels in the front door was cracked. 前门的一块方玻璃破裂了。

翻译：然而，日本的漫画正在被韩国的网络漫画所掩盖。去年，漫画市场缩减了2.3%，达到2650亿日元（19亿美元）。与此同时，全球网络漫画市场的规模被估价为37亿美元，预计到2030年将达到560亿美元。漫画正慢慢向数字领域靠拢，部分原因是它仍然是为印刷品设计的，所以在智能手机上阅读起来很不方便。字母往往太小，面板的布局方式需要不断放大和缩小。看到风向，李先生在2014年放弃了漫画，转向网络漫画行业。

03

Though webtoons such as “Itaewon Class” and “Solo Levelling” have become popular among Japanese consumers, most Japanese publishers have stuckdoggedly to manga. “The Japanese industry is very conservative,” sighs Mr. Lee. “There’s a strong belief that it’s better to stick withprecedent.” The manga industry’s business model, in which stories are first published in weekly magazines and then in books, has hardly changed since the 1960s. Their format is alsosacrosanct. Japanese mangahewto unique templates which require special knowledge of readers, such as the order in which panels must be read. “The only people who know how to read manga are Japanese, Koreans and geeks across the world,” says Iwamoto Keita, who runs a cartoon studio. Webtoons have grown so fast, in part, because they can be read more easily and intuitively. It is tempting to see the way manga.

1.dogged: not giving up easily 顽强的, e.g. their dogged defence of the city 他们对城市的严防死守

2.precedent: 先例：historical precedents　历史前例

3.sacrosanct: 神圣的 e.g., Philip is ignorant of establishing an immutable, sacrosanct urtext. 菲利普不屑于创立不变的、神圣的原始文本。

4.hew: 坚持，遵守 e.g., Every student must hew to the rules and regulations of the college. 每个学生都要遵守学校的规章制度。

翻译：尽管诸如《梨泰院班》和 《独自升级 》这样的网络漫画在日本消费者中很受欢迎，但大多数日本出版商还是顽固地坚持漫画。"日本的行业非常保守。" 李先生叹道，"有一种强烈的信念，即坚持先例更好。" 漫画业的商业模式，即故事先在周刊上发表，然后再出书，自1960年代以来几乎没有改变。他们的格式也是神圣不可侵犯的。日本漫画遵循独特的模板，需要读者具备特殊的知识，例如必须阅读的面板顺序。"经营一家漫画工作室的岩本启太说："唯一知道如何阅读漫画的人是日本人、韩国人和全世界的怪人。网络漫画发展得如此之快，部分原因是它们可以更容易、更直观地被阅读。看到漫画的方式很诱人。

04

Traditionalists arecedingthe global cartoon market to South Korean innovators as symbolic of a broadermalaise: thesluggishnessand introspection of too many Japanese firms. Other recent South Korean exports, such as the Netflix sensation “Squid Game” and BTS, a boy band, have taken the world by storm thanks to the same combination of innovation and smart marketing behind webtoons. Meanwhile, the “Cool Japan” strategy of the government in Tokyo, intended toemulatethat Korean success, has been a flop. Having run up huge losses, it may soon be abandoned.

1.cede: 割让 e.g: Cede territory to a neighboring state. 把领土割让给邻国。

2.malaise: 难以捉摸的问题：e.g., economic / financial / social malaise 揣摩不透的经济 / 金融 / 社会问题

3.sluggishness: The pace of things that move relatively slowly 迟缓, e.g., Dehydration leads to headaches, dizziness and sluggishness. 人一脱水就会头疼、眩晕和疲倦。

4.emulate: 模仿 e.g., You must look at the film and try to emulate his behavior. 你们必须观看这部电影，并尽力模仿他的动作。

翻译：传统主义者将全球漫画市场拱手让给韩国的创新者，象征着一种更广泛的弊病：太多日本公司的迟钝和自省。最近韩国的其他出口产品，如轰动一时的Netflix "鱿鱼游戏 "和男孩乐队防弹少年团已经风靡全球，这要归功于网络漫画背后同样的创新和聪明的营销组合。与此同时，东京政府的 "酷日本 "战略，旨在模仿韩国的成功，一直是失败的。由于损失巨大，它可能很快就会被放弃。

05

With its strong stories andcraftsmanship, manga maintains a loyal domestic audience, which gives publishers little motivation toinnovateor change. Growth in their core business may beflagging; yet they can still find opportunities to boost revenues through anime adaptations, or by collaborating with businesses that create manga-themed merchandise. Shueisha, the publisher that produced “Demon Slayer”, a recent hit manga and anime, had record sales in 2021. “There’s not much of a sense of crisis among Japanese publishers,” observes Nakayama Atsuo, an entertainment-industry expert.

1.craftsmanship: 手艺 e.g: The whole house is a monument to her craftsmanship. 那座房子是她技艺的一座丰碑。

2.innovate: 词根nov，表示novel，ate是动词后缀，innovate 创新

3.flagging: flag: 疲乏，热情减弱 e.g., His enthusiasm was in no way flagging. 他的热情丝毫没有减退。

翻译：凭借其强大的故事和工艺，漫画保持了忠实的国内观众，这让出版商没有什么动力去创新或改变。他们的核心业务的增长可能会减弱；但他们仍然可以找到机会，通过改编动漫，或与创造漫画主题商品的企业合作来提高收入。出版商Shueisha制作了 《灭鬼之刃》，这是最近的热门漫画和动画，在2021年有创纪录的销售。"日本出版商中并没有太多的危机感"，娱乐业专家中山笃夫提到。

06

Some stillfretabout the future. Japan’s manga fans are, like all its population, ageing. The average reader of the Weekly Shonen Magazine, a mangaanthologyfor children (shonen means “young boy”) launched in 1959, is now over 30. “Manga could end up as old people’s culture,” warns Mr. Lee. “Children these days are scrolling through webtoons on their smartphones. Why not make something that suits their taste?”

1.fret: fret about = worry about 担心 e.g: I was working all hours and constantly fretting about everyone else’s problems. 我一刻不停地工作着，还一直担心着其他人的问题。

2.anthology: a collection of poems, stories, etc. that have been written by different people and published together in a book (不同作家作品的)选集

翻译：一些人仍然对未来感到担忧。日本的漫画迷和所有人一样，都在不断老化。1959年创刊的《周刊少年》杂志是一本面向儿童的漫画选集（Shonen意为 "小男孩"），其平均读者现在已经超过30岁。"李先生警告说："漫画可能最终成为老年人的文化。现在的孩子们在智能手机上滚动浏览网络动画。为什么不做一些适合他们的东西？"

第三步：阅读双语文章

上下滑动阅读双语全文

LEE HYUN-SEOK grew up in South Korea addicted to Japanese manga series such as “Dragon Ball” and “Slam Dunk”. As soon as he could, he emigrated to Tokyo to build a successful career as a manga artist and editor. Then in the early 2000s came “webtoons”, a South Korean cartoon innovation optimised for smartphones. Mr Lee was at first unimpressed. Compared with manga’s inventive graphic styles and sophisticated plots, he found webtoons crude and superficial. “I thought: ‘Anybody can make this’.”

李贤硕在韩国长大，沉迷于日本漫画系列，如《龙珠》和《大灌篮》。他一有机会就移民到东京，作为漫画家和编辑建立了成功的事业。然后在21世纪初，"网络漫画 "出现了，这是韩国为智能手机优化的卡通创新。李先生起初不以为然。与漫画的创造性的图形风格和复杂的情节相比，他发现网络漫画粗糙而肤浅，他说，"我想：'任何人都可以做这个' "。

Yet Japanese manga is being eclipsed by Korean webtoons. Last year the manga print market shrank by 2.3% to ¥265bn ($1.9bn). The size of the global webtoons market was meanwhile valued at $3.7bn—and projected to reach $56bn by 2030. Manga is gravitating to digital slowly, in part because it is still designed for print, so awkward to read on smartphones. The letters tend to be too small and the way the panels are laid out requires constant zooming in and out. Seeing which way the wind was blowing, Mr Lee abandoned manga for the webtoon industry in 2014.

然而，日本的漫画正在被韩国的网络漫画所掩盖。去年，漫画市场缩减了2.3%，达到2650亿日元（19亿美元）。与此同时，全球网络漫画市场的规模被估价为37亿美元，预计到2030年将达到560亿美元。漫画正慢慢向数字领域靠拢，部分原因是它仍然是为印刷品设计的，所以在智能手机上阅读起来很不方便。字母往往太小，面板的布局方式需要不断放大和缩小。看到风向，李先生在2014年放弃了漫画，转向网络漫画行业。

Though webtoons such as “Itaewon Class” and “Solo Levelling” have become popular among Japanese consumers, most Japanese publishers have stuck doggedly to manga.“The Japanese industry is very conservative,” sighs Mr Lee. “There’s a strong belief that it’s better to stick with precedent.” The manga industry’s business model, in which stories are first published in weekly magazines and then in books, has hardly changed since the 1960s. Their format is also sacrosanct. Japanese manga hew to unique templates which require special knowledge of readers, such as the order in which panels must be read. “The only people who know how to read manga are Japanese, Koreans and geeks across the world,” says Iwamoto Keita, who runs a cartoon studio. Webtoons have grown so fast, in part, because they can be read more easily and intuitively. It is tempting to see the way manga.

尽管诸如《梨泰院班》和 《独自升级》这样的网络漫画在日本消费者中很受欢迎，但大多数日本出版商还是顽固地坚持漫画。"日本的行业非常保守。" 李先生叹道，"有一种强烈的信念，即坚持先例更好。" 漫画业的商业模式，即故事先在周刊上发表，然后再出书，自1960年代以来几乎没有改变。他们的格式也是神圣不可侵犯的。日本漫画遵循独特的模板，需要读者具备特殊的知识，例如必须阅读的面板顺序。"经营一家漫画工作室的岩本启太说："唯一知道如何阅读漫画的人是日本人、韩国人和全世界的怪人。网络漫画发展得如此之快，部分原因是它们可以更容易、更直观地被阅读。看到漫画的方式很诱人。

Traditionalists are ceding the global cartoon market to South Korean innovators as symbolic of a broader malaise: the sluggishness and introspection of too many Japanese firms. Other recent South Korean exports, such as the Netflix sensation “Squid Game” and BTS, a boy band, have taken the world by storm thanks to the same combination of innovation and smart marketing behind webtoons. Meanwhile, the “Cool Japan” strategy of the government in Tokyo, intended to emulate that Korean success, has been a flop. Having run up huge losses, it may soon be abandoned.

传统主义者将全球漫画市场拱手让给韩国的创新者，象征着一种更广泛的弊病：太多日本公司的迟钝和自省。最近韩国的其他出口产品，如轰动一时的Netflix "鱿鱼游戏 "和男孩乐队防弹少年团已经风靡全球，这要归功于网络漫画背后同样的创新和聪明的营销组合。与此同时，东京政府的 "酷日本 "战略，旨在模仿韩国的成功，一直是失败的。由于损失巨大，它可能很快就会被放弃。

With its strong stories and craftsmanship, manga maintains a loyal domestic audience, which gives publishers little motivation to innovate or change. Growth in their core business may be flagging; yet they can still find opportunities to boost revenues through anime adaptations, or by collaborating with businesses that create manga-themed merchandise. Shueisha, the publisher that produced “Demon Slayer”, a recent hit manga and anime, had record sales in 2021. “There’s not much of a sense of crisis among Japanese publishers,” observes Nakayama Atsuo, an entertainment-industry expert.

凭借其强大的故事和工艺，漫画保持了忠实的国内观众，这让出版商没有什么动力去创新或改变。他们的核心业务的增长可能会减弱；但他们仍然可以找到机会，通过改编动漫，或与创造漫画主题商品的企业合作来提高收入。出版商Shueisha制作了 《灭鬼之刃》，这是最近的热门漫画和动画，在2021年有创纪录的销售。"日本出版商中并没有太多的危机感"，娱乐业专家中山笃夫提到。

Some still fret about the future. Japan’s manga fans are, like all its population, ageing. The average reader of the Weekly Shonen Magazine, a manga anthology for children (shonen means “young boy”) launched in 1959, is now over 30. “Manga could end up as old people’s culture,” warns Mr Lee. “Children these days are scrolling through webtoons on their smartphones. Why not make something that suits their taste?”.

一些人仍然对未来感到担忧。日本的漫画迷和所有人一样，都在不断老化。1959年创刊的《周刊少年》杂志是一本面向儿童的漫画选集（Shonen意为 "小男孩"），其平均读者现在已经超过30岁。"李先生警告说："漫画可能最终成为老年人的文化。现在的孩子们在智能手机上滚动浏览网络动画。为什么不做一些适合他们的东西？"

第三步：回答问题（评论区回答问题）

Reading Questions：

1. When did webtoons come?

2. What did Mr. Lee do in 2014 after he saw manga was gravitating to digital?

3. Why did the recent South Korean exports become popular

滑动查看答案

Q1

In the early 2000s.

Q2

Seeing which way the wind was blowing, Mr Lee abandoned manga for the webtoon industry in 2014.

Q3

Because of the same combination of innovation and smart marketing behind webtoons.

今天是小芳老师陪你精读外刊的第37天

检查一下，你学到了吗？

1. manga: 日本漫画 2. webtoon: 网络漫画 3. craftsmanship: 手艺 4. emulate: 模仿

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