this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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Deepl, German alternative to Google translate (www.deepl.com)
submitted 4 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
30 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Is it also the superior product? It depends on your use-case. I always prefer it over Google Translate since it is much more accurate and keeps the overall accuracy and tone for longer texts, which Translate does not.

๐ŸŒŸ Precision & Natural Flow
DeepLโ€™s AI excels in delivering translations that sound like they were written by a human. It captures idioms, tone, and context beautifully, especially in languages like German, French, or Spanish. Google often translates word-for-word, leading to clunky or literal results.

๐Ÿ“š Context Matters
DeepL allows you to highlight specific words for alternative translations, making it perfect for refining technical, creative, or formal texts. Googleโ€™s one-size-fits-all approach struggles with subtle differences in meaning.

๐Ÿ”’ Privacy Focus
DeepL prioritizes user privacy by anonymizing data and avoiding ad-targeting practices. Since the company behind it, DeepL SE, is based in Germany, it also profits from higher privacy from an ideology perspective (we germans love keeping our data safe & private). Google, while improving, still ties translations to user accounts for broader data collection.

๐Ÿ’ก Extra Features
From customizable formality levels (e.g., formal vs. informal English) to seamless document translation, DeepL offers tools that cater to professionals and casual users alike.

โœ๏ธ DeepL Write Arenโ€˜t the best writer? DeepL Write can help you paraphrase your own sentences and make them more structured, friendly or professional. Try it for your next work Email!

TL;DR: Google is faster and offers more languages. But for quality, nuance, and privacy, DeepL is unmatched. By using it, you also help an european company train their models instead of Googles. Give it a try, you will not be disappointed!

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[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Way better than Google and I especially love that in translatons they also seamlessly convert weirdo imperial units to metric so you don't have to deal with cups and feet or whatever.

[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Wait I thought DeepL was common knowledge. You telling me people still use Google Translate in this day and age?

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago

Hi, I'm people. Downloading DeepL on my phone as I'm writing this

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I still use Google Translate for language learning. I've tried both side by side and I like that Google is a bit more literal. It's hard to explain. Not saying it's better, just that it's been more useful to me for comparing sentences.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

Being literal is bad. It should produce something that a native would say, not a literal translation.

Love, a translator.

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 4 weeks ago

In my own experience, DeepL is also far better for the languages I've used it for than Google Translate. It gives very accurate results and even alternative suggestions if you're trying to convey different nuance.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 4 weeks ago

Does it have offline translation? If not, it's not a viable Google translate alternative for me

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

It is absolutely superior. I have family working in translation and as interpreters, they long ago converted me to using DeepL instead of google translate.

DeepL is worse at individual words out of context, amazing for a sentence or full text.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

I find ChatGPT/Claude best for translating full sentences, and I just use Google translate when I need to translate a single word and don't have internet (which it seems like DeepL can't do?)

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago

Fantastic service - been using it for years and it was already way ahead years ago.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago

Even though it still makes mistakes or strange sentences(i have only used it to translate from english to my native language, romanian), its so much more accurate than google translate and offers ways to easily correct those mistakes

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago

DeepL is gold. Before DeepL there was just were no goo translation apps for Finnish, but already 6 years ago I was incredibly impressed by it translating To/From Finnish - German - English.

DeepL is worth paying for too if you need such tools at work or for a personal project.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago

There's also a really useful Firefox extension that lets you mark text on any website and translate it via deepl in a small popup window: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/deepl-translate/

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Damn, they're German? Their quality is so much better than Google Translate!

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Not disagreeing with anything OP said, but one downside with DeepL is that it is not great as a lexicon. Basically, if you want to translate one single word instead of a longer text, as can be useful for example if you run into a word you do not know in a language which you otherwise have some grasp of. However, Google is neither good at this. One site/app/company that is good at it though is the French site/app/company Reverso. Hence, if you based on this post try DeepL and notice that it does not really suit your needs, like happened to me, so is that no need to go back to Google.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

If you want to translate single words, the English Wiktionary is often a good option.

Edit: if you need multi-language to multi-language, the English Wiktionary will only give you multi-language to English. However, like its sister project Wikipedia, there are other Wiktionaries for that. For instance, the French Wiktionary is multi-language to French.

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Unfortunately it doesn't appear to have Scottish Gaelic. Unlikely with such a niche language, but, does anyone know of a Google Translate alternatives with Gaelic?

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

If you need a specific language that's only on Google Translate you could try Lingva, it's an alternative frontend for Google Translate that supposedly should have less tracking and gives the same results.

https://lingva.ml/

You could also try translating trough an AI like Mistral to see what it will come up with. In my experience the translations in Google Translate are quite bad, especially for the smaller regional languages so AI might actually be better in that regard.

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

But for quality, nuance, and privacy, DeepL is unmatched.

As much as I'd like this to be true, I have to disagree. Perhaps the quality of the translation depends on the language you translate from / to, but the results I got for my native language ranged from not very good to absolute rubbish.

What's even more frustrating is that there's no (easy) way for me to report such bad results so the developers could fix them. :/

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Out of curiosity may I ask what language? It's been incredible for such a small language as Finnish.

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Hungarian. I've just tested it again, but I'm still not happy with the results.

Also, it always seems to suggest the word you're translating in the "Alternatives" section for some reason. So, for instance, if I translate "moron" or "baffling", DeepL thinks "moron" and "baffling" are valid alternatives. They're not, these are neither Hungarian words nor English ones that a Hungarian would use.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

It is really bad for single words - for single words a dictionary is way better (I use https://www.dict.cc/). DeepL's amazingness comes from it understanding context better and that's what sets it really apart from Google (which has like no understanding of context sometimes and doesn't even offer proper alternatives)

I tried it out and wrote a longer sentence and it didn't seem to have the same problem with the word "moron". But! I don't know Hungarian so I can't really say and I believe when you say it is not good... I'm sorry to hear it isn't a feasible alternative for Hungarian.. Hope a better one pops out or DeepL enhances Hungarian :/

[โ€“] [email protected] -1 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Can DeepL be used offline? One of the killer features of Google Translate IMHO is the ability to download the language models and translate offline, that plus the integration with Google Lens which also can be used completely offline to translate text in real life pointing the camera or from an image is a killer feature I have not seen other alternative provide, I would like to be completely independent from an online service, even if it is Google if you download the languages and block internet access of the app with a firewall that is better than an online service.

I am currently not using Google Translator, uninstalled the app together with Lens and have a degoogled phone now but I am suffering in silence every day

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

You can with LibreTranslate. I have not done so myself but explored the option once. Worth checking out.

[โ€“] [email protected] -1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

without being picky about quality of translations vs Google Translator, this can't be used offline in the phone/android, right? maybe trying to setup the server side inside Termux could work, this doesn't solve the problem of translating text just by pointing the camera to some banner or traffic sign etc. which is useful while traveling in a foreign country etc.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't think so. Check out LibreTranslate, I think it can be selfhosted but not sure.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I know, but I don't want to self-host it, I want to use it completely offline as an app on the phone just as google translator app, also LibreTranslate can't translate in real time using the phone camera like Google Lens

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I imagine that google translate stores that data localy then and just matches it like in a dictionary?

I obviously don't have a replacement for google lens, but I wonder if offline google translate is just literally like a crossreferebcing dictionary. Woulf be a bit annoying to set up oneself I imagine.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

You download the "model" or whatever they use to translate for each language you want, it is like 100MB each IIRC, then you can fully use the language translator offline, by default only English can be used offline the others you manually click a download button besides the language entry in the language selector