A German Startup Races Google to Develop a Universal Translator
Experts say Cologne-based DeepL holds its own in using cutting-edge AI for translation services.
Kutylowski at DeepL’s offices in Cologne.
Photographer: Felix von der Osten & Kayla Kauffman
Techies have been promising for years to make a real-life version of a universal translator—the gadget that appears in myriad sci-fi books, movies and TV shows, allowing characters to understand one another regardless of the language they’re speaking. Rapid advances in artificial intelligence, which grabbed the public imagination with the 2022 introduction of ChatGPT, have made that imagined reality actually seem within reach.
One logical candidate to offer such a translator is Alphabet Inc.’s Google, whose Translate service already handles more than 130 languages. Last year, Google showed a video featuring eyeglasses that could display subtitled translations in real time. (The actual glasses have yet to arrive.) There’s also OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, which users have been employing to translate multiparagraph passages. Spotify Technology SA recently disclosed plans to use OpenAI’s tech to translate popular podcasts into other languages, read by AI-rendered clones of their popular hosts’ voices.