DeepL CEO Jaroslaw “Jarek” Kutylowski.
DeepL
German artificial intelligence translation startup DeepL on Wednesday launched traditional Chinese as a language option as it looks to expand its presence in Asia.
DeepL, one of Europe’s high-profile AI companies valued at $2 billion, sells translation software aimed at businesses rather than everyday consumers.
Traditional Chinese is a written form of Chinese used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Both locations are key business hubs for technology and finance — a factor that attracted DeepL to launch its latest language in those markets.
Jaroslaw “Jarek” Kutylowski, CEO of DeepL, told CNBC that Taiwan and Hong Kong are “strong technological markets” that are “exporting” — especially in the case of Taiwan, which is home to the world’s biggest chipmaker TSMC.
Wednesday’s launch is not DeepL’s first foray into Asia. The Cologne, Germany-headquartered firm already has Japanese and Korean on its platform.
“Looking especially at Taiwan, there is a lot of similarities in that market to other successful Asian markets we have seen in Japan and Korea,” Kutylowski said.
The CEO added that for now, the traditional Chinese business will be run out of Japan before the company considers opening any physical presence in places such as Taiwan or Hong Kong.
DeepL last week launched its next-generation large language model (LLM), which it claims outperforms the latest version of ChatGPT, Google and Microsoft for translation quality. An LLM is an AI model trained on huge amounts of data. That is what underpins DeepL’s translation software.
The firm, which has high profile venture backers including a fund from Mark Zuckerberg’s family office called ICONIQ Growth and Index Ventures, is seen as a rival to Google Translate.
DeepL, however, focuses more on corporate customers. It aims to expand its language offering — of which it now has 33 languages — to help businesses communicate globally. With the launch of traditional Chinese, the firm is looking to help some of its international customers more effectively communicate with clients or employees in Taiwan or Hong Kong.
The company is also looking to attract businesses to its platform from jurisdictions that are seeking to expand internationally.
Spoken language to drive Asia push
DeepL already offers simplified Chinese as a language which is used in mainland China. However, it does not have business with mainland Chinese companies.
By launching traditional Chinese, DeepL is targeting competing with China’s biggest technology players including Baidu and Tencent, which have translation tools of their own.
Kutylowski said DeepL’s point of difference is that it can accurately offer lots of languages that will allow businesses in places like Hong Kong and Taiwan to communicate globally. Asia will remain a big focus for DeepL in the coming months, he said.
“Our focus on general is on Asian languages, so you will most probably see other Asian languages coming up in the next few months,” Kutylowski said.
DeepL’s products currently focus on written language, but Kutylowski confirmed the company is working on a spoken language translation product but declined to provide a timeline to when that would launch.
“Translation of spoken language is going to be an important part of our strategy in Asia. We will see more and more of that product being a revenue stream,” Kutylowski said.
