There are at least several online translation services available on the Internet
The most popular are Google Translate, Bing Microsoft Translator and translation tools built into Facebook. The quality of translations offered by these portals usually allows a general understanding of the text, but it is impossible to say that the translated content sounds natural.In practice, this excludes the possibility of using these platforms to translate longer texts or entire documents intended for professional use. However, there is a relatively young service (launched in 2017), the quality of translations of which often surpasses the most popular online translators.
DeepL
Based on machine translation and neural networks, DeepL offers automatic translation between English, Polish, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Dutch. The quality of the translations is so good that in most of the cases I have tested it does not require manual corrections.
However, if necessary, just click on the wrong word or beginning of a sentence to select other, usually perfectly matching proposals from the drop-down list. Interestingly, making a change, e.g. in the middle of a sentence, may cause the rest of the sentence to be rebuilt, taking into account cases or nouns.
Because DeepL is based on neural networks, the translator can select words based on the context of the whole sentence, so that they make sense and sound more natural than with competing products.
Translating presentations and Word documents
In July 2018, DeepL expanded its service to include the translation of documents with the .docx and .pptx extensions. This means that instead of copying and pasting the text into the form available on the website, you can simply upload the finished document and download the translated version. Now you know how to quickly translate an offer into a foreign language.
Remember, however, that DeepL is a service based on neural networks and machine learning – the content of the documents you send can be remembered and used to create other translations. Keep this in mind if you are going to submit a document containing confidential data to DeepL.
Summary
Although artificial intelligence does not replace (yet) a real translator, it can be extremely useful for developing a high-quality translation draft, on which it is then sufficient to apply some corrections. This approach, depending on the subject matter of the translated text, can save a lot of time.
If you want to evaluate the quality of translations offered by DeepL, have a look at my blog’s English pages – they have been translated from Polish using this tool. I personally corrected some of the phrases, but they were rather occasional treatments.
I hope you find DeepL useful. Please let me know in the comments how you perceive the quality of translations offered by this service.
