Yesterday, at the Akihabara UDX theatre, the awards ceremony and symposium for Manga Translation Battle vol.5 was held to an (almost) sold out audience of manga industry insiders and bloggers.
With the entire proceedings being expertly narrated by Arai, we were lead through the motions as each of the 3 translated mangas were introduced, and the respective authors of the winning translations said their thank-yous to the theatre via video message. Two of the mangakas, Machio Same and Takeshi Sakurai even showed up in person to congratulate the winners. The Grand Prize Winner, Eleanor Summers, also showed up in person to accept her award.
What was perhaps more impressive was the talent that was assembled to speak at a symposium held during the second half of the event. On the panel was the Director of Shueisha - Ibaraki Masahiko, the Director of Kodansha - Furukawa Kohei, the Director of Media Do - Mizoguchi Atsushi, and finally, moderating the event was the Director of the Futaba Corporation - Shimano Kouji. Speaking on the theme of "how to get manga more widely read overseas", the present global distribution efforts of the big name anime/manga companies were discussed, as well as the future of the medium abroad.