Serifu is a tool for creating and exporting manga translation scripts as structured documents.
The structured data format that Serifu uses allows it to automatically handle many aspects of the translation script formatting process that otherwise must be done manually. Page, panel, and dialogue line numbers are tracked and updated automatically as you work. Serifu also keeps track of all the character/speaker names used in a script, and suggests them as options in an autocomplete menu, saving keystrokes and removing opportunities for error.
Serifu documents conform to a simple but strict tree structure.
An empty panel is indicated with a panel node that contains an empty line node; likewise, an empty page is indicated by containing a single panel, which contains a single empty line node.
Serifu is designed to remove as much repetition from the manga script composition workflow as possible. Instead of manually typing the number of the next line, panel, or page to be translated, you use the "New Line", "New Panel", and "New Page" buttons or keyboard shortcuts. These automatically insert a new line, page, or panel at the next valid location in the document, and automatically apply and update the correct numbering, when necessary.
The most efficent way to use these commands is via keyboard shortcuts. The shortcuts are as follows:
Because of Serifu's strict document structure, when you create a new panel or page, you also create the first line within them.
Any time a new line is created, the Line Label Editor is automatically opened. This is where you type the character or line type (in Serifu parlance, the "speaker") associated with the line. A speaker is most often the name of the character speaking, but might also be a word such as "caption" or "sign".
Lines can also be labeled with a style, such as "bold", "big", or "scary". These are used to indicate a specific lettering style. Different publishers have different guidelines for how to indicate lettering directions like this, and the style label is meant to accomodate most or all of them.
The speaker field of the Line Label Editor has an autocomplete feature. It will suggest previously-used speakers as you type. You can use the left and right arrow keys to move between these suggestions, and the tab key to accept a suggestion. Once you've tab-accepted a suggestion, you can hit tab again to move to the Style field, or enter to apply the speaker to the line.
The tab key opens the Line Label Editor for whichever line contains the cursor, and the escape key closes it without applying changes
You can apply two styles to text within a line: Emphasis and Note. To apply a style, select the text, then click either "Toggle Emphasis" or "Toggle Note" in the Tools sidebar.
Text with the Emphasis style appears bold and italicized, and is meant to indicate a word or words that should be given extra weight in the layout.
Sound Effects (hereinafter "SFX") are a special kind of line. To create a sound effect line, use the control-j keyboard shortcut. Control-j will toggle a line back and forth between SFX and default.
Some publishers require your script to include both the translation and transliteration of the SFX. The translation is entered exactly the same way as text is entered in a standard line. If a transliteration is also necessary, you can press tab to open up the "Literal SFX" editor, which functions very similarly to the Line Label Editor.
It is often necessary for the translator to leave a note in the script explaining something to someone who might be reading it later, e.g., the letterer or editor. Serifu has a Note line type for this purpose. You can press Control-Alt-/ to toggle a line back and forth from the Note type.
Selecting regions of text works how you would expect, with some caveats.
You can only directly select text that is part of the script—that is to say, part of the translation as it will appear to the reader. Labels like Speaker, Style, and SFX, as well as page and panel numbers, are metadata, and kept structurally separate from the text.
Additionally, Serifu will not allow an edit that would cause the document's structure to become invalid (i.e., a panel without at least one line in it).
If you select all of the text in all of the lines for a given page, then press delete, you will not only delete the text, but also the panels and page containing them. The subsequent pages will then be re-numbered appropriately.
Undo (control-z) and Redo (control-y) work as expected.
Currently, Serifu does not store any data on the server side. As you edit a document, it is saved to your browser's local storage. This means that if you quit your browser, or it crashes, you can reload Serifu, and the script you were editing should automatically appear.
To save a Serifu document in its native format, use the "Download Script Data" button. This generates a file containing the structure of your script, along with the metadata Serifu generates as your work.
You can import a file downloaded from Serifu in this way by using the "Import Script Data" button at the bottom of the Serifu window. Click the "Choose File" button, navigate to the data file, select it, then click "Import Script Data." The Serifu view will refresh with the new script.
Note: When you import a data file in this way, it will overwrite the contents of Serifu's internal autosave.
You can currently export script text to the script style guidelines of Yen Press, Viz, and Kodansha. When you choose one of the available options and click "Export Flat Text", Serifu generates a plain text file based on the selected publisher's style. The contents of this text file can then be pasted into a word processor like Word or Google Docs and adjusted before final submission.
Important: Serifu's browser autosave is intended to preserve your current document in the event that you accidentally close the browser window, or the browser crashes, etc. It is not a replacement for manually downloading and saving your document. In particular, if you clear your browser history and data, anything Serifu has saved in local storage may be wiped out without any specific warning that this will happened. I strongly recommend that you use the "Download Script Data" button to save your work between translation sessions.
To install the InDesign extension, download it from the link in the left hand column of Serifu's interface. After you've unzipped the file, you'll need to move it to the folder where InDesign expects to find extensions. On macOS, this is:
/Users/your username/Library/Adobe/CEP/extensions/
For Windows, this is:
C:\Users\your username\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CEP\extensions
Once the Serifu folder is moved to the right place, you'll need to enable debug mode for Adobe products to let the extension code actually run.
On a Mac:
1. Launch the Terminal app.
2. When the command prompt is displayed (probably your username, followed by "$"), paste this command in:
defaults write com.adobe.CSXS.9 PlayerDebugMode 1Hit
return.Nothing should happen other than the command prompt being displayed again. This means it worked, and you can quit the Terminal app.
On Windows:
Open the Registry editor, and navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Adobe/CSXS.9. Then, add a new entry of type "string" calledPlayerDebugMode, and set its value to1.
Once you've moved the Serifu folder to the proper location and turned on debug mode, you can run the panel. It will show up in the Window > Extensions menu as "Serifu." Select it, and the panel should appear. It looks like this on startup:
To take the panel for a test drive, create a new document in InDesign and add some pages to it. Then, download this demo script file. Once it's downloaded, click the "Choose File" button on the panel under Import Script File, and navigate to wherever you saved serifu_demo.json. Select it, and you should see a dialogue saying "Script file imported," with the panel now looking like this:
Try navigating to different pages in the InDesign document. You should see the script as it's displayed in the Serifu panel automatically update to show the text that corresponds to the InDesign page you're currently on.
The real magic of Serifu is in its ability to let you drop script text into a document in much the same way that InDesign's native Place function lets you drop images.
To start placing text, lay out some text boxes on a page, then click the green Enable Script Auto Place button on the Serifu panel. It should turn red, indicating that Auto Place is active, and display the text that will be placed next.
Then, select a text box. The selected text box will immediately be filled with the text from the script, and the next line in the queue will be displayed at the top of the panel. You can repeat this process until all of the text for that page is placed.
When you navigate to a different page with Auto Place active, the text placing queue automatically updates:
I have Word/text editor scripts that deal with page and panel numbers for me, so why do I need this?
You might not. I wrote Serifu after becoming frustrated with the limits of my own editor automation scripts, and my goal is to create a dedicated application that's a better tool for manga translation than word processor or text editor scripts can be. If there's something your tools do that Serifu doesn't, I'd love to know so I can try to add the functionality.
Do I have to be connected to the internet to use the Serifu editor?
No. Serifu's autosave uses your browser's local storage, and it loads all of its functionality when you open the editor. Once the page is loaded in your browser, you don't need to be connected to the internet to work with the app. Additionally, the "download script data" button actually generates the downloaded file locally, so it should also work while offline.
I don't want to use a proprietary tool maintained by one person to do the work I make a living at. Why should I?
I want people to use Serifu because it's useful, not because it's holding their translation work hostage. Serifu's native document format is based on JSON, and can be opened in any text editor.
Serifu will never keep your work from you. You can export your script to plain text right now, and I'll be adding .rtf support as soon as I can.
How do I point out a bug or make a suggestion for a feature?
I'm @pts on twitter, pts#7247 on discord, and my email address is pts@sockdolager.net.