Inside DeepL: The World’s Fastest-Growing Translation Company

Released in late-summer 2017, The Cologne, Germany-based machine translation (MT) provider DeepL’s free web translator offered seven European languages and arrived with the claim that it had outperformed big tech on quality by a factor of 3:1.

Journalists across Europe agreed. They said DeepL was “well disposed to grasping the sense of the sentence rather than being led astray by a literal translation”; that it produced more “French-sounding” expressions; and that its tool had outdone all the tech giants, raising the bar for machine translation.

While reactions from the language industry to DeepL’s quality claims were more measured, the company quickly gained a foothold in the market; and traffic to its web translator skyrocketed. Today, at press time, DeepL is the 146th most visited website globally based on Alexa and more than a billion people have used its services.

The company moved quickly to provide a professional version of its MT(Machine Translation) with DeepL Pro, released in March 2018. The subscription-based MT service offers tighter data security, CAT-tool integration, and API access.

For translators and language service providers, the Pro tool is more convenient for embedding DeepL’s MT in everyday processes. Developers are able to use the API to build language tools, such as Timekettle’s earpiece translator and Pocketalk, a two-way handheld translator device.

Secret Sauce

Many people are curious about the technology behind DeepL. Putting aside the company’s well-curated dataset and its reputation for rigorous pre-processing, it is evident that something in DeepL’s approach to neural networks is yielding a different kind of result, at least in certain language pairs and domains.

DeepL remains tight-lipped about their secret sauce. The company shies away from attending conferences or releasing research papers. Unsurprising given that keeping its tech a trade secret is key to maintaining its competitive edge against bigger competitors.

A source close to the company told Slator that, although its outward focus is on the nuances of language, the company is run by researchers and engineers and “definitely has a tech startup heart.”

According to LinkedIn data, engineering is the company’s largest function (accounting for 28% of employees) and the company has about a dozen Research Scientists, mostly located in Germany.

DeepL job posts describe the team as “a small, effective and extremely good team with a lot of trust and very short decision-making processes. The decision makers are researchers/developers themselves.”

DeepL’s oversized performance in the AI space was acknowledged in September 2019 with an Honorary German AI Award, an initiative to promote and drive innovation in artificial intelligence.

What’s Next for DeepL?

DeepL appears to be going through a spike of growth and change, with hiring activity indicating the company is bulking up its engineering, product development, and account / customer support functions. This, in turn, suggests a focus on new products and the further expansion of its enterprise client base.

The company’s original headquarters near the Rhine River in Cologne closed its doors in March 2020. A new office location was opened, still in the city center, where the staff takes up two floors. An office has also been opened in the “Silicon Roundabout,” London’s startup hub; and the company is also currently recruiting for Amsterdam-based roles.

DeepL is characteristically quiet about what it has in the pipeline. When approached for comment for this story, a customer support specialist at the company told Slator: “We are currently concentrating 100% of our efforts on our core business and unfortunately are unable to take on inquiries such as these at the moment.”

However, DeepL’s new mission statement, to become Europe’s leading AI company, speaks volumes. With its mix of language and machine learning expertise, it appears likely that the company will branch out beyond MT into other AI language applications.

If its success in machine translation is anything to go by, its new AI products will be something to be reckoned with.

Source: slator

往期文章回顾：

宁波玛斯特翻译服务有限公司是宁波首家专注于综合语言服务的服务提供商，提供笔译、口译及其他语言服务。公司是宁波市外文翻译学会理事会理事，具备中国翻译协会会员单位资质，并于2016年通过ISO 9001:2015 质量管理体系认证。公司至今服务国内外及本地企事业单位多达10000多家，主要服务对象为上市集团公司、律师事务所、会计师事务所、外贸企业等，服务质量受到广大客户一致的认可。

公司目前拥有译员5名，其中获得CATTI一级笔译证书的译员1名，CATTI二级笔译证书译员2名，CATTI二级口译证书译员3名，长期固定合作翻译80名。主要提供法律、经济、商务、工程、文学等领域的翻译服务，涉及语种有英、法、德、日、韩、俄、西、印地语等。截至目前累计处理字数达1.2亿，口译项目300多个，语言培训项目20个。