BERLIN ¨C German technology firm DeepL, known for its artificial intelligence-powered translation software, plans to release a Japanese-language version of its real-time interpretation software by the end of this year, a senior company official has said.
The age of machine interpretation has arrived, said Leonardo Doin, head of engineering and research for real-time voice translation service DeepL Voice, in a recent interview.
¡°You can just wear an earpiece and ... you can just hear it (foreign-language speech) in your language anytime,¡± Doin said. ¡°That¡¯s really what the future looks like. Real-time interpretation, anywhere, anytime.¡±
The interpretation software will integrate DeepL¡¯s speech recognition and machine translation technologies, and speech synthesis technology that mimics the tones of the speakers¡¯ voices. It will be able to handle multiple languages and speakers, he said, with the software¡¯s use in online meetings of multinational companies in mind.
DeepL plans to roll out the software on smartphones as well.
According to Doin, ¡°Japan is the most important market¡± for the German firm¡¯s existing speech translation service.
The new software will be able to accurately identify the structures and meanings of sentences and produce translations in five seconds or less, he said. Some Japanese firms are already using the software on a trial basis.
With U.S. technology giants such as Google and Apple also developing real-time interpretation software, DeepL is seeking to differentiate itself from competitors by equipping its software with a glossary function that enables users to set how certain phrases are translated.
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