DeepL Translator is a

neural machine translation Neural machine translation (NMT) is an approach to machine translation that uses an artificial neural network to predict the likelihood of a sequence of words, typically modeling entire sentences in a single integrated model. Properties They requi ...

service launched in August 2017 and owned by DeepL SE, based in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

. The translating system was first developed within Linguee and launched as entity ''DeepL''. It initially offered translations between seven

European languages Most languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language. Within Indo-European, the three largest phyla are Ro ...

and was gradually expanded to support 29 languages. Additionally, approximations of language equivalence are proposed among all of those languages, using a two-step process via an English pivot. It offers a paid subscription for additional features and access to its translation application programming interface.

Service

Translation methodology

The service uses a proprietary algorithm with

convolutional neural network In deep learning, a convolutional neural network (CNN, or ConvNet) is a class of artificial neural network (ANN), most commonly applied to analyze visual imagery. CNNs are also known as Shift Invariant or Space Invariant Artificial Neural Netwo ...

s (CNNs) that have been trained with the Linguee database. According to the developers, the service uses a newer, improved architecture of neural networks, which results in a more natural sound of translations compared to competing services. The translation is said to be generated using a supercomputer that reaches 5.1

petaflop In computing, floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate meas ...

s and is operated in

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its ...

with

hydropower Hydropower (from el, ὕδωρ, "water"), also known as water power, is the use of falling or fast-running water to produce electricity or to power machines. This is achieved by converting the gravitational potential or kinetic energy of ...

. In general, CNNs are slightly more suitable for long, coherent word sequences, but have so far not been used by the competition due to their weaknesses compared to

recurrent neural network A recurrent neural network (RNN) is a class of artificial neural networks where connections between nodes can create a cycle, allowing output from some nodes to affect subsequent input to the same nodes. This allows it to exhibit temporal dynamic ...

s. The weaknesses at DeepL are compensated for by supplemental techniques, some of which are publicly known.

Translator and subscription

The translator can be used for free with a 5,000 characters limit per translation. Microsoft Word and PowerPoint files in

Office Open XML file formats The Office Open XML file formats are a set of file formats that can be used to represent electronic office documents. There are formats for word processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations as well as specific formats for material ...

(.docx and .pptx) and PDF files can also be translated. It offers a paid subscription called ''DeepL Pro'', which has been available since March 2018, and includes application programming interface access and a software plug-in for

computer-assisted translation Computer-aided translation (CAT), also referred to as computer-assisted translation or computer-aided human translation (CAHT), is the use of software to assist a human translator in the translation process. The translation is created by a huma ...

tools, including

SDL Trados Studio Trados Studio is a  computer-assisted translation software tool which offers a complete, centralised translation environment for editing, reviewing and managing translation projects and terminology- either offline in a desktop tool or onlin ...

. Unlike the free version, translated texts are stated to not be saved on the server and the character limit is removed. The monthly pricing model includes a set amount of text, with texts beyond this calculated according to the number of characters.

Supported languages

As of September 2022, the translation service supports the following languages: * Bulgarian * Chinese ( Simplified) * Czech *

Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national id ...

( American and

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English ...

) * Estonian * Finnish * French *

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

* Hungarian *

Indonesian Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to: * Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia ** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago ** Indonesia ...

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

* Latvian * Lithuanian *

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Port ...

( Brazilian and European) *

Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania **Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language *** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language **Romanian cuisine, traditiona ...

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

* Slovak * Slovene *

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: ** Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Ca ...

* Swedish * Turkish *

Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * Som ...

History

The translating system was first developed within Linguee by a team led by Chief technology officer Jaroslaw Kutylowski in 2016. It was launched as DeepL Translator on 28 August 2017, offering translations between English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish and Dutch. With the launch, it claimed to have surpassed its competitors in self-conducted

blind test In a blind or blinded experiment, information which may influence the participants of the experiment is withheld until after the experiment is complete. Good blinding can reduce or eliminate experimental biases that arise from a participants' expec ...

s and BLEU scores, including

Google Translate Google Translate is a multilingual neural machine translation service developed by Google to translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a website interface, a mobile app for Android and iOS, and an A ...

, Amazon Translate,

Microsoft Translator Microsoft Translator is a multilingual machine translation cloud service provided by Microsoft. Microsoft Translator is a part of Microsoft Cognitive Services and integrated across multiple consumer, developer, and enterprise products; including ...

and

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

's translation feature. With the release of DeepL in 2017, Linguee's company name was changed to DeepL GmbH. In 2017, it was also financed by advertising on its sister site linguee.com. In July 2019, Jaroslaw Kutylowski became CEO of DeepL GmbH and restructured the company into a

Societas Europaea A ''societas Europaea'' (, ; "European society" or "company"; plural: ; abbr. SE) is a public company registered in accordance with the corporate law of the European Union (EU), introduced in 2004 with the Council Regulation on the Statute fo ...

in 2021. Support for Portuguese and Russian languages was added on 5 December 2018. Translation software for Microsoft Windows and

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

was released in September 2019. Support for Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese was added on 19 March 2020, which it claimed had surpassed aforementioned competitors as well as

Baidu Baidu, Inc. ( ; , meaning "hundred times") is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products and artificial intelligence (AI), headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District. It is one of th ...

and Youdao. 13 more European languages were added in March 2021. On 25 May 2022, support for Indonesian and Turkish languages was added, while support for Ukrainian language was added on 14 September 2022. In November 2022, DeepL launched a tool to improve monolingual texts in English and German, called DeepL Write. In December the company removed access, informing journalists that it was only for internal use and that DeepL Write will be launched in early 2023.

Reception

Reception of DeepL Translator in 2017 has been generally positive, with ''

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximat ...

'' appreciating it for the accuracy of its translations, stating that it was more accurate and nuanced than

, and ''

Le Monde ''Le Monde'' (; ) is a French daily afternoon newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average circulation of 323,039 copies per issue in 2009, about 40,000 of which were sold abroad. It has had its own website si ...

'' thanking its developers for translating French text into more 'French-sounding' expressions. A news article from the website of the Dutch television channel

RTL Z RTL Z is a Dutch free-to-cable business and financial news television channel. It displays economic changes and the stock exchange news in a banner at the bottom of the screen in the daytime. In the evenings the programming consists of documen ...

stated that DeepL Translator "offers better translations ��when it comes to Dutch to English and vice versa". An Italian newspaper ''

la Repubblica ''la Repubblica'' (; the Republic) is an Italian daily general-interest newspaper. It was founded in 1976 in Rome by Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso (now known as GEDI Gruppo Editoriale) and led by Eugenio Scalfari, Carlo Caracciolo and Arno ...

'' and a Latin American website "WWWhat's new?" showed praise as well. In 2020, Japanese website Gigazine found the Japanese translation to be accurate, even when the text was mixed with dialects. Press noted it had far fewer languages available for translation than competing products. It also lacks a website translation feature and free app integrations. A 2018 paper by the

University of Bologna The University of Bologna ( it, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, UNIBO) is a public research university in Bologna, Italy. Founded in 1088 by an organised guild of students (''studiorum''), it is the oldest university in continuo ...

evaluated the Italian to German translation capabilities and found the preliminary results to be in similar quality to Google Translate. In September 2021, Slator remarked that the language industry response was more measured than the press, while noting it is still highly regarded. DeepL Translator won the 2020

Webby Award The Webby Awards are awards for excellence on the Internet presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over two thousand industry experts and technology innovators. Categories includ ...

for Best Practices, and the 2020 Webby Award for Technical Achievement (Apps, Mobile, and Features), both in the category Apps, Mobile & Voice.

Statistics

DeepL.com was ranked 136th in the

Alexa Alexa may refer to: Technology *Amazon Alexa, a virtual assistant developed by Amazon * Alexa Internet, a defunct website ranking and traffic analysis service * Arri Alexa, a digital motion picture camera People *Alexa (name), a given name and ...

ranking of the most-visited sites in the world as of October 2021.

References

Bibliography

External links

*
DeepL appsDeepL Chrome extension
{{DEFAULTSORT:DeepL Translator Machine translation software Multilingual websites Natural language processing software Free and open-source Android software Products introduced in 2017 Translation websites