Kakao buys translation house as it readies digital comic foray into France

South Korea’s Kakao has added a multilingual translation and localization company as it readies to take a crack at the European comic powerhouse of France after prevailing over other key traditional cartoon publishing markets of Japan and the U.S.

Kakao Entertainment Corp., a unit of South Korean internet giant Kakao Group, has recently completed the process to acquire Kiwi Media Company, a one-stop localization service firm offering translation, subtitling, dubbing, and media processing, for undisclosed amount, according to industry sources on Wednesday. Kiwi Media Company was founded in Korea in late 2016.

Kakao Entertainment reportedly operates an in-house team of over 100 translators working in seven languages – English, Japanese, Thai, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Indonesian, and Hindi. The addition of Kiwi Media comes at a time when it is preparing to add French and Spanish for service expansion in Europe.

To woo more global audience, Kakao operates localization teams for cultural adaptation of creative works. Its internal localization team for Japan directly handles 30 percent of localization process for all web comics published in Korean for service in Japanese language, which is offered via its subsidiary Piccoma.

[Source: Kakao Entertainment Corp.]

With enhancement of its translation and localization teams, Kakao Entertainment is expected to expedite webtoon service in France next month. France, the second largest cartoon market in Europe after Germany, will serve as a gateway to broader European webtoon market. France traditionally is an important comics market along with Japan and the U.S.

Kakao’s webtoon service in France is expected to feature an animated thumbnail function, which gives users a quick snapshot of cartoon. The animated thumbnail has been well received in Thailand and Taiwan sine it was first introduced in June.

Kakao Entertainment confirmed that the company is preparing for webtoon service in Europe but declined to comment on the launch date.

Other digital content providers including global streaming giant Netflix and Kakao’s rival web comics provider Naver also have been aggressively expanding investments in upgrading their translation capability to offer their services to a wide range of customers across the world.

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