What inspired the creation of DeepL, and how has the vision evolved since its inception?
DeepL was developed in 2017 with a mission to break down language barriers faced by businesses through specialised AI technology.

Seamless communication across languages is crucial for companies operating internationally or looking to scale – both in order to boost efficiency and to find new markets. Our models are purpose-built for language and translation tasks, offering unparalleled precision.This accuracy is further enhanced by the input of many human translators to find the careful balance between accuracy and fluency and provide more natural sounding translations.

We are constantly evolving to ensure we are meeting our customers’ needs and have achieved this by introducing innovative products such as the Glossary feature, Tone setting for translations, and Style for writing. Our latest innovation, DeepL Voice, provides voice translation for real time-spoken interactions. Today, we offer AI translation and writing solutions used by over 100K+ businesses worldwide.

Can you share a pivotal moment in DeepL’s journey that significantly impacted its trajectory?
The recent launch of DeepL Voice marks our first foray into speech based translations. With the first two products,Voice for Meetings and Voice for Conversations, DeepL Voice makes it possible to conduct virtual meetings across several languages as well as real-time translation for in-person conversations. We believe that real-time speech translation is the next frontier for us as a business, enabling us to extend our expertise beyond writing solutions, and enabling businesses to communicate in multiple languages as required.

What differentiates DeepL’s AI and neural networks from other translation technologies?
Our success comes down to the strong academic-level research we’ve always been active in, coupled with the specialization on solving translation and language problems for businesses in those high-value use cases. There are not a lot of software companies that have such a deep tech expertise and carry out such detailed AI research.

DeepL is taking its unique offerings a step further by being one of the first in the world to commercially debut the new NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD with DGX GB200 systems, helping researchers to test new ideas faster, train models more quickly, and deliver near real-time inference whenever our users need us.

How do you ensure translations maintain cultural nuance and context across diverse languages?
We work hand in hand with thousands of human translators to ensure our models outperform the competition. Our expert team of translators is involved across many states of our R&D process, from building the models for a new language to improving existing ones.

By incorporating a human element in the initial phases of our research, we avoid the risk of our translations sounding robotic, and help ensure that our translations pick up cultural nuances. This also applies during the evaluation stage; while synthetic evaluations deliver quick results, the ground truth is to ask those that have invented and mastered the use of language to provide feedback on translations – how accurate they are, how nuanced, how native the language feels. Only we humans can judge on that. To this day, some of our earliest adopters and users are translators.

What AI and machine learning advancements do you foresee driving DeepL’s future innovation?
Language AI is one of the most strategic investments a business can make. Since our inception, we have been a research-driven company. We will continue to invest heavily in our development as a company, creating specialized translation and writing solutions for businesses worldwide. Combining our depth of research with proprietary data accumulated over seven years, we can understand unique business needs and address them with our solutions.

B2B is our fastest-growing segment and is at the core of our GTM initiatives, driving our platform expansion. Our reach across markets has been further solidified by key milestones this year, such as the opening of our first office in the US and the launch of our services in Arabic.

What growth opportunities do you see for DeepL in the Middle East, and how are you tailoring the product for that market?
At DeepL, we understand the unique business needs of the region and the importance of Arabic communication for businesses here, which is why, earlier this year, we launched our translation services in Arabic to provide millions of companies and employees in all industries whose primary language is Arabic, the opportunity to go global and standardize communication across borders. Additionally, Arabic is the first language we have launched that is written and read from right-to-left, which represents a significant milestone in our journey.

How do you approach partnerships with regional businesses and governments to expand DeepL’s global presence?
We work closely with our customers globally, regardless of sector, to truly understand their needs. Our customers span multiple sectors, from the private to the public, including governments. Learning more about their different needs has enabled us to build solutions tailored to their needs; for example, we launched a specific commercial package earlier in the year called DeepL for Enterprise, which covered multiple areas our customers had been asking us for. 

What industries or use cases have the most potential for adopting DeepL’s services, particularly in multilingual regions like the Middle East?
Some of the sectors that benefit the most from Language AI are retail, manufacturing, and legal.

Using retail as an example, Language AI allows for operational efficiency by scaling communication across global offices, and reducing translation timings. Language AI can help develop multilingual marketing assets and customer service tools, translate internal systems, and enable seamless international expansion.

We’ve also seen significant benefits within the legal and manufacturing sectors. Given the UAE is home to diverse cultures and languages, legal professionals can benefit from DeepL’s AI translation services to bridge the language barrier often encountered by international law firms and practitioners. Our translator allows global manufacturing facilities to ease their supply chain and distribution with accurate translation of customs documents, product descriptions and local regulations.

How does DeepL’s technology empower startups and SMEs, especially those looking to scale globally?
Many startups and SMEs operating globally or looking to scale internationally need quick and accurate translation solutions. From employees communicating in their native languages and still understanding each other to external communications or legal documents, translation is a daily requirement for most organizations.

This is where we come in. At DeepL, we are focused on addressing the business use-case for language. Due to a lack of precision, several everyday AI tools pose security risks for businesses. Known for accuracy and security, our tools allow businesses to uphold professional credibility via trusted, high-quality, full-stack technology within a rigorous security framework.

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Hani Morrar, business development manager at Dakwak, a Web translation company in the 500 Startups Accelerator program writes that entrepreneurs are missing first-mover advantage by ignoring the Middle East.

“Even though the Arab world is home to more than 60 million smartphone users and 90 million people on the Internet, Arabic is widely regarded as the most under-served language on the internet,” Morrar says on the 500 Startups blog. “And less than 1 percent of all apps are available in Arabic. Talk about a BIG ASS missed opportunity.”

Morrar is backed up by research from Common Sense Advisory showing that the online Arabic-speaking population surpasses the Russian, French and German-speaking populations combined. Common Sense Advisory also found that only four of the top 100 Web brands offer Arabic content.

That’s a lot of potential users and Morrar writes that they’re easier to reach than it may seem. Using Google Translate or crowdsourcing services to get a basic modern standard Arabic translation is a good place if only because having some Arabic content would put a startup well in the lead of most companies.

“Many people still have completely false ideas of what life is like in the modern Arab world,” Morrar writes. “People use the internet. They go on Facebook. And they use apps, websites and almost everything else people use in the United States. Most of them have never ridden a camel, and many Arabs spend just as much time browsing silly Internet websites as you do.”

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The company, which launched its current platform six weeks ago, was founded in 2009 by Waheed Barghouthi after he attended a conference about how developers can help increase the amount of Arabic language content on the Internet.

“I wanted to make simple tools for Web site owners to translate their sites in an easy way, that would not only increase Arabic content, but also content in all languages. Many business owners are still in the mindset that 70% of the world’s population speaks English, but that number is only about 27%,” says Barghouthi. In addition to 500 Startups, Dakwak’s investors include Jordanian accelerator program Oasis500, Silicon Badia Ventures and IV Holdings.

When customers first sign up for Dakwak’s platform, all they need to enter their Web site’s URL and select a target language. Dakwak’s least expensive option is a machine translation, while professional translations are performed by Gengo’s translators. Translated Web sites, which have their own language subdomain, are stored on Dakwak’s servers, allowing the startup’s team to make quick updates. Dakwak’s clients have access to a dashboard that allows them to order and review new translations and then publish it to their Web site.

“There’s no email back-and-forth with translators. You can send your guidelines, but there is no operational headache,” says Barghouthi. “Web site owners just need to keep sending new content, and it comes back translated. If you have a lot of information to maintain, the network is the right solution because you don’t have to manage your Web site’s translation.”

Dakwak’s localization services go beyond written content–the platform’s dashboard lets Web site owners replace images and stylesheets and add JavaScript for specific languages. The startup is also developing email translation software that will allow users to read and respond to translated emails through Dakwak’s platform. The company currently offers an email translation service with an average turnaround time of 30 minutes to an hour.

Since launching its full platform six weeks ago, Dakwak has signed 30 customers, with the most-requested translated languages being English, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, French and Arabic. The company currently has five employees and offices in Jordan and Mountain View. Barghouthi’s goals for the next four to five months are to find more distribution channels in the U.S. and build the platform’s user base.

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