DeepL Translator now with document translation functionality
We reviewed the online translation service DeepL when it first appeared online in 2017 and concluded back then that it did offer high-quality translations that often beat those of comparable services such as Google Translate or Bing Translate.
Users had to paste or type text on the DeepL site to use the service to translate it to one of the supported languages. Language support was somewhat limited back then and that is unfortunately still the case with just seven languages supported at the time of writing.
DeepL supports English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Polish translations currently; this leaves out widely spoken languages such as Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, and limits DeepL's reach because Google's and Microsoft's offerings support pretty much any language out there.
DeepL document translations
The company behind DeepL rolled out a new feature recently that gives users options to use the service to translate documents they upload to it automatically.
Usage is pretty straightforward as the new functionality has been baked into the interface. A click on the translate document on the Translator page on the DeepL website displays supported formats and lists the languages that the document may be translated to.
DeepL's support for formats is limited to the Office formats .docx and pptx right now; it does not support doc or ppt, or other formats such as plain text txt or open formats.
The document is uploaded to the service once you have made the selection. It is then translated on the fly and downloaded automatically to the local system again. You can click on the "download again" button to restart the download if something blocked it.
DeepL won't touch the formatting of the document in any way. The company states that the service translates all elements of the document including body text but also titles, captions, or footnotes, and that the original formatting is retained.
It is possible to edit the document locally after translation and download; DeepL Pro customers benefit from faster translation speeds and options to edit the translated file. I was able to edit the downloaded file in Word, however without Pro account.
DeepL promises that it will add support for additional formats in the coming months; the company did not reveal the formats in the announcement, however.
Closing Words
Support for document translations is an important feature that should increase the reach of DeepL. I threw a couple of documents at DeepL to find out how well the translation of documents worked.
While translations are understandable, they are far from perfect. I just checked the English to German translation capabilities; any document that I uploaded to DeepL needed work after the translation as sentences sounded robotic and not human-like for the most part.
Now You: Which translation service do you use, and why?
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.