German start-up DeepL offers translations in your own voice

German AI start-up DeepL is significantly expanding its real-time language translation technology with new language models for its DeepL Voice application.

The German AI pioneer aims to do more than translate spoken words — it also wants to preserve each speaker's individual voice, tone, pace and emotions across language barriers.

The translation company has had increasingly tough competition from AI rivals like Microsoft, OpenAI and Google and has sought to hold an advantage with a suite of high-tech translation services.

The live translation service DeepL Voice launched just over a year ago, has until now focused primarily on providing subtitles in video conferences.

Direct voice-to-voice translation is now taking centre stage: a newly unveiled desktop app for Windows and Mac integrates seamlessly into platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet. Speakers can be translated into more than 30 languages, while the Speaker Match feature preserves voice identity in 14 languages initially.

"Our voice shows who we are. It conveys far more than just words," founder and chief executive Jarek Kutylowski told dpa. "The goal is that you can sit back and forget that an AI translation solution is involved at all," he said.

If someone speaks in an excited or hurried manner, he added, that should also come through in the translated tone.

Kutylowski said DeepL is well placed to compete with tech giants such as Google and Microsoft partner OpenAI, which are also investing heavily in multimodal language processing.

The Cologne-based AI company is firmly focused on corporate clients. "For companies, it's not just about translating an individual email or meeting," Kutylowski said. "It's about building a larger system that handles documents and speech consistently and applies company-specific terminology uniformly across all channels."

DeepL made headlines most recently in May when it announced job cuts. Kutylowski said at the time that the workforce would be reduced by 250 positions — around a quarter of all staff - citing changes in workflows in the AI era.

"In a world where AI is playing an ever greater role, we also had to restructure our roles and our internal organisation," he explained. Today he sees the company as far more strongly positioned: "I think we are now much better set up, both in Germany and in all the other countries where we are hiring again."

Founded in 2017, DeepL says it currently employs around 900 people and has more than 200,000 business customers. Its backers include prominent venture capital firms such as Benchmark, IVP and Index Ventures.