Is it also the superior product? It depends on your use-case. I always prefer it over Google Translate since it is much more accurate and keeps the overall accuracy and tone for longer texts, which Translate does not.
🌟 Precision & Natural Flow
DeepL’s AI excels in delivering translations that sound like they were written by a human. It captures idioms, tone, and context beautifully, especially in languages like German, French, or Spanish. Google often translates word-for-word, leading to clunky or literal results.
📚 Context Matters
DeepL allows you to highlight specific words for alternative translations, making it perfect for refining technical, creative, or formal texts. Google’s one-size-fits-all approach struggles with subtle differences in meaning.
🔒 Privacy Focus
DeepL prioritizes user privacy by anonymizing data and avoiding ad-targeting practices. Since the company behind it, DeepL SE, is based in Germany, it also profits from higher privacy from an ideology perspective (we germans love keeping our data safe & private). Google, while improving, still ties translations to user accounts for broader data collection.
💡 Extra Features
From customizable formality levels (e.g., formal vs. informal English) to seamless document translation, DeepL offers tools that cater to professionals and casual users alike.
✍️ DeepL Write Aren‘t the best writer? DeepL Write can help you paraphrase your own sentences and make them more structured, friendly or professional. Try it for your next work Email!
TL;DR: Google is faster and offers more languages. But for quality, nuance, and privacy, DeepL is unmatched. By using it, you also help an european company train their models instead of Googles. Give it a try, you will not be disappointed!
Even though it still makes mistakes or strange sentences(i have only used it to translate from english to my native language, romanian), its so much more accurate than google translate and offers ways to easily correct those mistakes
It is absolutely superior. I have family working in translation and as interpreters, they long ago converted me to using DeepL instead of google translate.
DeepL is worse at individual words out of context, amazing for a sentence or full text.
Wait I thought DeepL was common knowledge. You telling me people still use Google Translate in this day and age?
Hi, I’m people. Downloading DeepL on my phone as I’m writing this
I still use Google Translate for language learning. I’ve tried both side by side and I like that Google is a bit more literal. It’s hard to explain. Not saying it’s better, just that it’s been more useful to me for comparing sentences.
Being literal is bad. It should produce something that a native would say, not a literal translation.
Love, a translator.
I should have also mentioned that I’m not using it for production, but for translating the target language into English.
I needed the reminder.
In my own experience, DeepL is also far better for the languages I’ve used it for than Google Translate. It gives very accurate results and even alternative suggestions if you’re trying to convey different nuance.
DeepL is gold. Before DeepL there was just were no goo translation apps for Finnish, but already 6 years ago I was incredibly impressed by it translating To/From Finnish - German - English.
DeepL is worth paying for too if you need such tools at work or for a personal project.
Can DeepL be used offline? One of the killer features of Google Translate IMHO is the ability to download the language models and translate offline, that plus the integration with Google Lens which also can be used completely offline to translate text in real life pointing the camera or from an image is a killer feature I have not seen other alternative provide, I would like to be completely independent from an online service, even if it is Google if you download the languages and block internet access of the app with a firewall that is better than an online service.
I am currently not using Google Translator, uninstalled the app together with Lens and have a degoogled phone now but I am suffering in silence every day
You can with LibreTranslate. I have not done so myself but explored the option once. Worth checking out.
There’s also a really useful Firefox extension that lets you mark text on any website and translate it via deepl in a small popup window: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/deepl-translate/
Damn, they’re German? Their quality is so much better than Google Translate!
Unfortunately it doesn’t appear to have Scottish Gaelic. Unlikely with such a niche language, but, does anyone know of a Google Translate alternatives with Gaelic?
If you need a specific language that’s only on Google Translate you could try Lingva, it’s an alternative frontend for Google Translate that supposedly should have less tracking and gives the same results.
You could also try translating trough an AI like Mistral to see what it will come up with. In my experience the translations in Google Translate are quite bad, especially for the smaller regional languages so AI might actually be better in that regard.
Oh sweet, that looks interesting. Thanks!
Not disagreeing with anything OP said, but one downside with DeepL is that it is not great as a lexicon. Basically, if you want to translate one single word instead of a longer text, as can be useful for example if you run into a word you do not know in a language which you otherwise have some grasp of. However, Google is neither good at this. One site/app/company that is good at it though is the French site/app/company Reverso. Hence, if you based on this post try DeepL and notice that it does not really suit your needs, like happened to me, so is that no need to go back to Google.
If you want to translate single words, the English Wiktionary is often a good option.
Edit: if you need multi-language to multi-language, the English Wiktionary will only give you multi-language to English. However, like its sister project Wikipedia, there are other Wiktionaries for that. For instance, the French Wiktionary is multi-language to French.
Deepl is the same company as linguee, which is a dictionary that shows you examples of the words in actual text, so you get the context.
For word translation I use Wordreference (unfortunately not European). It is especially helpful with idioms and with combined forms. (I use En/Fr)
I’ll give reverso another try, but the in context only approach doesn’t always appeal to me.
To translate single words, I’d suggest you use a real dictionary, as they tend to provide much more options and a bigger nuance. Also the option to quickly translate the suggestions back again to see what the nuanced meaning is, helps a lot. I use leo.org for that.
If you know the language , but not the specific word, I suggest a single language dictionary such as the OED
And if I’m translating from my native language into a foreign one, the"other languages" link in Wikipedia has often helped me. Especially for technical terms it helps a lot to find the correct native page first. For example, a normal dictionary wouldn’t be too helpful to find out that a Hund in German is called a derail in English.
Been using it for ages. It provides better results that google translate on my uses.
It is a very good service. One of the few I pay for. Try it and you won’t be dissapointed
But for quality, nuance, and privacy, DeepL is unmatched.
As much as I’d like this to be true, I have to disagree. Perhaps the quality of the translation depends on the language you translate from / to, but the results I got for my native language ranged from not very good to absolute rubbish.
What’s even more frustrating is that there’s no (easy) way for me to report such bad results so the developers could fix them. :/
Out of curiosity may I ask what language? It’s been incredible for such a small language as Finnish.
Hungarian. I’ve just tested it again, but I’m still not happy with the results.
Also, it always seems to suggest the word you’re translating in the “Alternatives” section for some reason. So, for instance, if I translate “moron” or “baffling”, DeepL thinks “moron” and “baffling” are valid alternatives. They’re not, these are neither Hungarian words nor English ones that a Hungarian would use.
It is really bad for single words - for single words a dictionary is way better (I use https://www.dict.cc/). DeepL’s amazingness comes from it understanding context better and that’s what sets it really apart from Google (which has like no understanding of context sometimes and doesn’t even offer proper alternatives)
I tried it out and wrote a longer sentence and it didn’t seem to have the same problem with the word “moron”. But! I don’t know Hungarian so I can’t really say and I believe when you say it is not good… I’m sorry to hear it isn’t a feasible alternative for Hungarian… Hope a better one pops out or DeepL enhances Hungarian :/
Thanks for your suggestion regarding single words. I’ve tried dict.cc it with “baffling”, “egregious” but no translations were found… :)
I’ve also just tried translating sentences with DeepL and the results were OK, so it looks like you’re right, it’s more for translating text instead of just words.
Now, what’s even more interesting is that when translating “moron” on the webpage using a mobile browser, it shows “moron” as an alternative, but when using a desktop browser it doesn’t. If I translate “confused”, I get different suggestions for alternatives… 🤨
Screenshots: Mobile - https://postimg.cc/rRpMgzZf and Desktop - https://postimg.cc/CzXSHhG4
Ah that’s a bummer… I hope you find a better dictionary! I use it often for German myself and haven’t tried many other languages :(
I’m glad to hear the text translation works! We don’t really have many EU alternatives to proper translations, so anything is helpful!
Seems like DeepL is itself confused ;) No idea why that is so… Also you had a good question earlier: where to go to give feedback? I became curious and went to look and you are right, there doesn’t seem to be an obvious way to give feedback. Guess I should contact them about this. I use DeepL a lot myself and this would be a useful feature to have in case I need it.
Nice! This is an easy replace, I’ve no strong attachements to Google Translate. One step closer to de-google myself
Yes, excellent app.
