DeepL Translator

DeepL Translator is a free neural machine translation service launched on 28 August 2017 and developed by DeepL GmbH (Linguee), based in Cologne, Germany. It has received positive press asserting that it is more accurate and nuanced than Google Translate.
DeepL currently offers translations between the following 24 languages and 552 language pairs: Bulgarian, Chinese (Simplified), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (US or UK), Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish. Additionally, approximations of language equivalence are proposed among all of those languages, using a two-step process via an English pivot.
There are no advertisements on the DeepL website. The company expects to earn money by licensing a translation application programming interface.
Translation methodology.
The algorithm and source code are closed-source and proprietary. The service uses convolutional neural networks (CNNs) that have been trained with the Linguee database. It is based on neural networks, but the details of the technique have not been disclosed. According to the developers, the service uses a newer, much improved architecture of neural networks, which results in a more natural sound of translations compared to competing services. The translation is generated using a supercomputer that reaches 5.1 petaflops and is operated in Iceland with hydropower. 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 networks. The weaknesses at DeepL are compensated for with additional tricks, some of which are publicly known.
Word documents in .docx format as well as PowerPoint presentations (.pptx) can also be translated. Footnotes, formatting and embedded images are retained.
History.
The company was founded in 2008 by Gereon Frahling and Leonard Fink in Cologne under the name Linguee GmbH. They set up a dictionary for 25 languages that can be used for translation via an online service. With the release of DeepL 2017, the company name was changed to DeepL GmbH. In March 2020, Deepl announced that it had achieved a significant increase in performance compared to its competitors by modifying its AI system.
The Portuguese and Russian languages were added on December 5, 2018, and Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese on March 19, 2020. 13 more European languages were added in March 2021.
Translation software for Microsoft Windows and macOS was released in September 2019.
Use.
Free use.
Use is free of charge up to a text length of 5,000 characters. Commercial customers can use a paid application programming interface to embed DeepL in their software, from €5.99 per month for personal use. In addition, DeepL is financed by on-screen advertising on its sister site linguee.com.
Paid subscription.
The "DeepL Pro" paid subscription service for professional translators, companies and developers, which has been available since March 2018, has a programming interface and a software plug-in for computer-assisted translation tools, including SDL Trados Studio. In contrast to the free version, translated texts are not saved; the text length in the input field is not limited to 5,000 characters. The pricing model provides for a basic monthly fee that includes a set amount of text. Texts beyond this are calculated according to the number of characters. Confidentiality features are also available to deliver translations of submitted text and delete the text as soon as the translation is complete. In addition to text input, Microsoft Word and PowerPoint documents can be uploaded for translation.
In October 2018, the pricing model was revised so that various options are available instead of just one payment model.
Privacy.
The site prohibits users from using the service for the translation of personal and sensitive information of third parties. Simultaneously, without advertising or sponsored results, DeepL uses their HTTP cookies to re-identify users and associate them with pseudonymous user profiles.
The site complies with European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulations.
Statistics.
According to the data from the aggregator Cutestat.com, , the DeepL website had about 312,000 unique daily users and 2.5 million views. Although at the time it had far fewer languages available for translation than competing products, DeepL Translator was ranked 2149th in the Alexa ranking of the most visited sites in the world. In Germany it ranked 276th where 30% of the site's users concentrated, followed by France, Switzerland, Spain and Italy. In August 2018, DeepL crossed the threshold of 20 million people using it. , 21.8% of traffic came from Germany, 17.4% from France, 10% from Spain, 7.9% from Switzerland and 4.1% from Poland.
In the "toptools4learning.com" rankings, compiled from a sample of around 3,000 respondents in 58 countries, DeepL Translator is ranked 150th for the second consecutive year, qualified as a "software" for individual productivity.
Reception.
Reception of the DeepL Translator has been generally positive, with "TechCrunch" appreciating it for the accuracy of its translations, stating that it was more accurate and nuanced than Google Translate, and "Le Monde" 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 stated that DeepL Translator "offers better translations […] when it comes to Dutch to English and vice versa". An Italian newspaper "la Repubblica" and a Latin American website "WWWhat's new?" showed praise as well.
DeepL claims to have surpassed its competitors in blind tests, including Google Translate, Amazon Translate, Microsoft Translator and Facebook. Based on the Japanese and Chinese translation of 119 paragraphs of text from various fields outside professional translators have highly evaluated DeepL compared to other services such as Google, Amazon.com, and Microsoft. In addition, the Japanese translations were found to be accurate, even when the text was mixed with dialects. 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.