DeepL Translator

Multilingual neural machine translation service

DeepL Translator
Type of site
Neural machine translation
Available in32 languages
HeadquartersCologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
OwnerDeepL SE
Key peopleJaroslaw Kutylowski
URLdeepl.com/translator
CommercialYes
RegistrationOptional
Launched28 August 2017; 6 years ago (2017-08-28)
Current statusActive

DeepL Translator is a neural machine translation service that was launched in August 2017 and is owned by Cologne-based DeepL SE. The translating system was first developed within Linguee and launched as entity DeepL. It initially offered translations between seven European languages and has since gradually expanded to support 32 languages.

Its algorithm uses convolutional neural networks and an English pivot.[1] It offers a paid subscription for additional features and access to its translation application programming interface.[2]

Service

Translation methodology

The service uses a proprietary algorithm with convolutional neural networks (CNNs)[3] that have been trained with the Linguee database.[4][5] According to the developers, the service uses a newer improved architecture of neural networks, which results in a more natural sound of translations than by competing services.[5] The translation is said to be generated using a supercomputer that reaches 5.1 petaflops and is operated in Iceland with hydropower.[6][7] In general, CNNs are slightly more suitable for long coherent word sequences, but they have so far not been used by the competition because of their weaknesses compared to recurrent neural networks. The weaknesses of DeepL are compensated for by supplemental techniques, some of which are publicly known.[3][8][9]

Translator and subscription

DeepL for Windows translating from Polish to French

The translator can be used for free with a limit of 1,500 characters per translation. Microsoft Word and PowerPoint files in Office Open XML file formats (.docx and .pptx) and PDF files can also be translated.[10]

It offers paid subscription DeepL Pro, which has been available since March 2018 and includes application programming interface access and a software plug-in for computer-assisted translation tools, including SDL Trados Studio.[11] Unlike the free version, translated texts are stated to not be saved on the server; also, the character limit is removed.[12] The monthly pricing model includes a set amount of text, with texts beyond that being calculated according to the number of characters.[13]

Supported languages

Target languages available in DeepL 23.10.1.11125

As of March 2024, the translation service supports the following languages:[14][15]

History

The translating system was first developed within Linguee by a team led by Chief Technology Officer Jarosław Kutyłowski (germanised spelling: Jaroslaw Kutylowski) in 2016. It was launched as DeepL Translator on 28 August 2017 and offered translations between English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish and Dutch.[18][19][20][7] At its launch, it claimed to have surpassed its competitors in blind tests and BLEU scores, including Google Translate, Amazon Translate, Microsoft Translator and Facebook's translation feature.[21][22][23][24][25][26] With the release of DeepL in 2017, Linguee's company name was changed to DeepL GmbH,[27] and it is also financed by advertising on its sister site, linguee.com.[28]

Support for Portuguese and Russian was added on 5 December 2018.[29] In July 2019, Jarosław Kutyłowski became the CEO of DeepL GmbH[30] and restructured the company into a Societas Europaea in 2021.[31] Translation software for Microsoft Windows and macOS was released in September 2019.[12] Support for Chinese (simplified) and Japanese was added on 19 March 2020, which the company claimed to have surpassed the aforementioned competitors as well as Baidu and Youdao.[32][33] Then, 13 more European languages were added in March 2021.[34] On 25 May 2022, support for Indonesian and Turkish was added,[16] and support for Ukrainian was added on 14 September 2022.[17] In January 2023, the company reached a valuation of 1 billion euro and became the most valued startup company in Cologne[35] - at the end of the month, support for Korean and Norwegian (Bokmål) was also added.[36]

DeepL Write

In November 2022, DeepL launched a tool to improve monolingual texts in English and German, called DeepL Write. In December, the company removed access and informed journalists that it was only for internal use and that DeepL Write would be launched in early 2023. The public beta version was finally released on January 17, 2023.[37]

Reception

Reception of DeepL Translator in 2017 was generally positive, with TechCrunch appreciating it for the accuracy of its translations and stating that it was more accurate and nuanced than Google Translate,[3] and Le Monde thanking its developers for translating French text into more "French-sounding" expressions.[38] A news article from the website of the Dutch television channel RTL Z stated that DeepL Translator "offers better translations […] when it comes to Dutch to English and vice versa".[39] An Italian newspaper, La Repubblica,[40] and a Latin American website, "WWWhat's new?", showed praise as well.[41]

The press noted that it had far fewer languages available for translation than competing products.[29] A 2018 paper by the University of Bologna evaluated the Italian-to-German translation capabilities and found the preliminary results to be similar in quality to Google Translate.[42] In September 2021, Slator remarked that the language industry response was more measured than the press and noted that it is still highly regarded.[43]

DeepL Translator won the 2020 Webby Award for Best Practices and the 2020 Webby Award for Technical Achievement (Apps, Mobile, and Features), both in the category Apps, Mobile & Voice.[44]

See also

References

  1. ^ Pérez Núñez, P., Luaces Rodríguez, Ó., Bahamonde Rionda, A., & Díez Peláez, J. (2018). Representaciones basadas en redes neuronales para tareas de recomendación. In XVIII Conferencia de la Asociación Española para la Inteligencia Artificial (CAEPIA 2018). I Workshop en Deep Learning (DEEPL 2018).
  2. ^ van Miltenburg, Olaf (29 August 2017). "Duits bedrijf DeepL claimt betere vertaaldienst dan Google te bieden" [German company DeepL claims to offer better translation service than Google]. Tweakers (in Dutch). Archived from the original on 11 June 2020. Retrieved 10 August 2020.
  3. ^ a b c Coldewey, Devin; Lardinois, Frederic (29 August 2017). "DeepL schools other online translators with clever machine learning". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 20 February 2018. Retrieved 1 September 2019.
  4. ^ Sanz, Didier (12 March 2018). "Des traductions en ligne plus intelligentes" [Smarter online translations]. Le Figaro (in French).
  5. ^ a b "DSL.sk - Sprístupnený nový prekladač postavený na umelej inteligencii, tvrdí že je najlepší" [A new translator based on artificial intelligence has been made available, claims to be the best]. DSL.sk (in Slovak). 30 August 2017. Archived from the original on 3 July 2020. Retrieved 10 August 2020.
  6. ^ Feldman, Michael (31 August 2017). "Startup Launches Language Translator That Taps into Five-Petaflop Supercomputer". TOP500. Archived from the original on 31 August 2017. Retrieved 6 June 2018.
  7. ^ a b Schwan, Ben (31 August 2017). "Maschinenintelligenz: Der Besserübersetzer" [Machine Intelligence: The Better Translator]. heise online (in German). Heinz Heise. Technology Review. Archived from the original on 28 January 2018. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  8. ^ Bahdanau, Dzmitry; Cho, Kyunghyun; Bengio, Yoshua (1 September 2014). Neural Machine Translation by Jointly Learning to Align and Translate. arXiv:1409.0473.
  9. ^ Pouget-Abadie, Jean; Bahdanau, Dzmitry; van Merrienboer, Bart; Cho, Kyunghyun; Bengio, Yoshua (October 2014). "Overcoming the Curse of Sentence Length for Neural Machine Translation using Automatic Segmentation". Proceedings of SSST-8, Eighth Workshop on Syntax, Semantics and Structure in Statistical Translation. Stroudsburg, PA, USA: Association for Computational Linguistics: 78–85. arXiv:1409.1257. doi:10.3115/v1/w14-4009. S2CID 353451.
  10. ^ "One-click Document Translation with DeepL". DeepL.com. 18 July 2018. Archived from the original on 30 March 2019. Retrieved 18 July 2018.
  11. ^ "DeepL Pro". Deepl.com. Archived from the original on 7 June 2020. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  12. ^ a b Tarui, Hideto (23 March 2020). "Odoroki no hinshitsu o mushō de ~ AI hon'yaku sābisu "DeepL hon'yaku" ga nihongo to chūgokugo ni taiō - madonoto" 驚きの品質を無償で ~AI翻訳サービス"DeepL翻訳"が日本語と中国語に対応 - 窓の杜 [Amazing quality free of charge - AI translation service "DeepL Translation" is available in Japanese and Chinese]. forest.watch.impress.co.jp (in Japanese). Mado no Mori. Archived from the original on 23 March 2020. Retrieved 24 March 2020.
  13. ^ Berger, Daniel (20 March 2018). "DeepL Pro: Neuer Aboservice für Profi-Übersetzer, Firmen und Entwickler" [DeepL Pro: New subscription service for professional translators, companies and developers]. heise online (in German). Heinz Heise. Archived from the original on 20 March 2018. Retrieved 20 March 2018.
  14. ^ Wagner, Janet (20 March 2018). "DeepL Language Translator Expands with Pro Edition and RESTful API". ProgrammableWeb. Archived from the original on 27 March 2019. Retrieved 10 August 2020.
  15. ^ "Languages included in DeepL Pro". DeepL.com. Archived from the original on 6 May 2022. Retrieved 25 January 2024.
  16. ^ a b c "DeepL welcomes Turkish and Indonesian". www.deepl.com. 25 May 2022. Retrieved 14 September 2022.
  17. ^ a b "DeepL learns Ukrainian". www.deepl.com. 14 September 2022. Retrieved 14 September 2022.
  18. ^ Schneider, Richard (30 August 2017). "DeepL, der maschinelle Übersetzungsdienst der Macher von Linguee: Ein Quantensprung?". UEPO.de (in German).
  19. ^ Mingels, Guido (6 May 2018). "Wie es einem deutschen Unternehmen gelang, besser als Google zu sein" [How a German company managed to be better than Google]. Der Spiegel (in German).
  20. ^ Neuhaus, Elisabeth (25 March 2020). "Spekuliert Deepl auf den Google-Exit, Jaroslaw Kutylowski?" [Is Deepl speculating on the Google exit, Jaroslaw Kutylowski?] (in German). Gründerszene. Archived from the original on 1 April 2020. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  21. ^ "New online translator "more powerful than Google"". Connexion France. 5 September 2017. Archived from the original on 9 January 2019. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  22. ^ Giret, Laurent (30 August 2017). "Microsoft Translator is world class fast, but supercomputer DeepL Translator wins out". OnMSFT.com. Archived from the original on 3 June 2020. Retrieved 10 August 2020.
  23. ^ Börteçin, Ege (22 January 2018). "Interview A Conversation on AI and Data Science: Semantics to Machine Learning". bortecin.com. Archived from the original on 5 August 2020. Retrieved 10 August 2020.
  24. ^ Merkert, Pina (29 August 2017). "Maschinelle Übersetzer: DeepL macht Google Translate Konkurrenz" [Machine translators: DeepL competes with Google Translate]. heise online (in German). Heinz Heise. Archived from the original on 30 August 2017. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  25. ^ Gröhn, Anna (17 September 2017). "DeepL: Was taugt der Online-Übersetzer im Vergleich zu Bing und Google Translate" [DeepL: What does the online translator do compared to Bing and Google Translate]. Der Spiegel (Spiegel Online) (in German). Der Spiegel. Archived from the original on 24 January 2018. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  26. ^ Faes, Florian (30 August 2017). "Linguee's Founder Launches DeepL in Attempt to Challenge Google Translate". Slator. Archived from the original on 6 May 2018. Retrieved 10 August 2020.
  27. ^ "Why DeepL Got into Machine Translation and How It Plans to Make Money". Slator. 19 October 2017. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  28. ^ Schwan, Ben (2 October 2017). "Maschinelles Übersetzen: Deutsches Start-up DeepL will 230 Sprachkombinationen unterstützen" [Machine translation: German start-up DeepL wants to support 230 language combinations]. heise online (in German). Heinz Heise. Archived from the original on 18 January 2018. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
  29. ^ a b Smolentceva, Natalia (5 December 2018). "DeepL: Cologne-based startup outperforms Google Translate". dw.com. Deutsche Welle. Archived from the original on 5 December 2018. Retrieved 6 December 2018.
  30. ^ "Jaroslaw Kutylowski neuer CEO von DeepL – Gereon Frahling will sich auf Forschung konzentrieren – UEPO.de" (in German). Retrieved 25 July 2022.
  31. ^ "Unternehmensregister" [Business register] (in German). Bundesanzeiger. Archived from the original on 7 September 2017. Retrieved 7 September 2018.
  32. ^ Berger, Daniel (19 March 2020). "KI-Übersetzer DeepL unterstützt Japanisch und Chinesisch" [AI translator DeepL supports Japanese and Chinese]. heise online (in German). Heinz Heise. Archived from the original on 24 March 2020. Retrieved 24 March 2020.
  33. ^ "'DeepL hon'yaku' ga nihongo taiō,'shizen'na yakubun' to wadai ni Doku benchā ga kaihatsu" 「DeepL翻訳」が日本語対応、「自然な訳文」と話題に 独ベンチャーが開発 ["DeepL Translator" is now available in Japanese, and the German venture has developed a "natural translation"]. www.itmedia.co.jp (in Japanese). ITmedia NEWS. 23 March 2020. Archived from the original on 24 March 2020. Retrieved 24 March 2020.
  34. ^ "DeepL Translator Launches 13 New European Languages". www.deepl.com. 16 March 2021.
  35. ^ "Übersetzungsdienst DeepL: Kölner Unternehmen bestätigt Einstieg von Silicon-Valley-Investor". Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger (in German). Retrieved 23 January 2023.
  36. ^ "DeepL Welcome Korean and Norwegian (bokmål)!". www.deepl.com. 31 January 2023. Retrieved 5 August 2023.
  37. ^ Ziegener, Daniel (17 January 2023). "DeepL Write: Brauchen wir jetzt noch eine menschliche Lektorin?". Golem.de.
  38. ^ Larousserie, David; Leloup, Damien (29 August 2017). "Quel est le meilleur service de traduction en ligne ?" [What is the best online translation service?]. Le Monde (in French). Archived from the original on 31 May 2019. Retrieved 1 September 2019.
  39. ^ Verlaan, Daniël (29 August 2017). "Duits bedrijf belooft betere vertalingen dan Google Translate" [German company promises better translations than Google Translate]. rtlZ.nl (in Dutch). RTL Group. Archived from the original on 8 October 2020. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
  40. ^ "Arriva DeepL, il traduttore automatico che sfida Google" [Here comes DeepL, the automatic translator that challenges Google]. la Repubblica (in Italian). 29 August 2017. Archived from the original on 1 September 2019. Retrieved 1 September 2019.
  41. ^ Polo, Juan Diego (29 August 2017). "DeepL, un traductor online que supera al de Google, Microsoft y Facebook" [DeepL, an online translator that outperforms Google, Microsoft and Facebook]. WWWhat's new? (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 1 September 2019. Retrieved 1 September 2019.
  42. ^ Heiss, Christine; Soffritti, Marcello (2018). "DeepL Traduttore e didattica della traduzione dall'italiano in tedesco" [DeepL Translator and didactics of translation from Italian into German. Some preliminary assessments]. InTRAlinea.org (in Italian). University of Bologna, Italy. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  43. ^ Wyndham, Anna (15 September 2021). "Inside DeepL: The World's Fastest-Growing, Most Secretive Machine Translation Company". Slator.
  44. ^ Kastrenakes, Jacob; Peters, Jay (20 May 2020). "Webby Awards 2020: the complete winners list". The Verge. Archived from the original on 21 May 2020. Retrieved 22 May 2020.

Bibliography

  • Heiss, Christine; Soffritti, Marcello (2018). "DeepL Traduttore e didattica della traduzione dall'italiano in tedesco: Alcune valutazioni preliminari" [DeepL Translator and Didactics of Translation from Italian into German: Some Preliminary Assessments] (in Italian). University of Bologna, Italy: InTRAlinea.org. Retrieved 28 January 2019.

External links

  • Official website Edit this at Wikidata
Authority control databases Edit this at Wikidata
International
  • VIAF
National
  • Germany