DeepL CEO Jaroslaw “Jarek” Kutylowski.
Deep L
German artificial intelligence translation startup DeepL launches on Wednesday The company hopes to expand its presence in Asia, adding Traditional Chinese as a language option.
DeepL is one of Europe’s high-profile artificial intelligence companies, valued at $2 billion, and sells translation software aimed at businesses rather than everyday consumers.
Traditional Chinese is the written form of Chinese used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Both locations are important business hubs for technology and finance — This is what attracts DeepL to launch its latest language in these markets.
DeepL CEO Jaroslaw “Jarek” Kutylowski told CNBC that Taiwan and Hong Kong are “powerful technology markets” that are being “exported” — especially Taiwan, which is home to the world’s largest chipmaker British Semiconductor.
Wednesday’s launch isn’t DeepL’s first foray into Asia. The Cologne, Germany-based company already offers Japanese and Korean languages on its platform.
“Taiwan in particular, that market has a lot of similarities to other successful Asian markets we’ve seen in Japan and South Korea,” Kutlovsky said.
For now, traditional China operations will be conducted out of Japan before the company considers opening any physical operations in places like Taiwan or Hong Kong, the CEO added.
DeepL launched its next-generation large language model (LLM) last week, claim Better than the latest version of ChatGPT, Google and Microsoft For translation quality. The LL.M. is an artificial intelligence model trained on a large amount of data. This is the basis of DeepL translation software.
The company has high-profile venture capital backers, including a fund from Mark Zuckerberg’s family office called ICONIQ Growth and Index Ventures, and is seen as a competitor to Google Translate.
However, DeepL focuses on More information about enterprise customers. It aims to expand its language services (currently in 33 languages) to help businesses communicate globally. With the launch of Traditional Chinese, the company hopes to help some of its international customers communicate more effectively with customers or employees in Taiwan or Hong Kong.
The company also hopes to attract businesses from jurisdictions seeking international expansion to join its platform.
Spoken language drives development in Asia
DeepL already offers Simplified Chinese as a language for use in mainland China. However, it has no business dealings with mainland Chinese companies.
By launching Traditional Chinese, DeepL aims to compete with China’s largest technology companies, including Baidu and Tencenthas its own translation tool.
What makes DeepL different, Kutylowski said, is that it can accurately deliver multiple languages, allowing businesses in places like Hong Kong and Taiwan to communicate globally. He said Asia will remain a major focus for DeepL in the coming months.
“Our focus is on Asian languages, so you’ll likely see other Asian languages appear in the next few months,” Kutrovsky said.
DeepL’s products are currently focused on written language, but Kutylowski confirmed that the company is developing a spoken language translation product but declined to provide a timetable for when the product will be launched.
“Spoken language translation will be an important part of our Asia strategy. We will see more and more of this product becoming a revenue source,” Kutlovsky said.
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