In the language services industry, DeepL is practically a household name.
And it looks like it’s becoming one outside the industry as well: It was recently named among the best “private cloud computing companies” in the Forbes Cloud 100. Read more on that — and how the city of North Las Vegas is implementing Wordly’s technology to improve language access — below.
And if you’re looking for some quick reads on multilingual.com, check out the press releases from KUDO and United Language Group, two companies that shared some pretty big news this week.
Got news you’d like to share in next week’s Week in Review? Send it over to our editorial team here.
This German Unicorn Is Trying To Take On Google Translate And ChatGPT (via Forbes)
Earlier this week, Forbes released its eighth annual Forbes Cloud 100 report — a list of the “best private cloud computing companies.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the list was topped by companies like OpenAI, Stripe and Databricks — but rounding out the list in the 100th slot is DeepL.
This is the German translation startup’s first appearance on the list — Forbes’ Rashi Shrivastava took some time to speak with the company’s leadership and learn a bit more about what makes DeepL tick.
“We need a lot of high-quality human-translated data just to learn the quirks of a language to translate both casual and formal text,” Jaroslaw Kutylowski, the startup’s CEO told Forbes.
North Las Vegas is using AI to translate public meetings in real time (via The Nevada Independent)
The North Las Vegas City Council is working with Wordly to enable real-time translation and transcription of council meetings between English and Spanish.
The technology will allow speakers to speak in Spanish, which will be translated and transcribed into English on large screens throughout the meeting space. Nearly 40% of the city speaks a language other than English at home, with roughly the same number of people identifying as Hispanic. North Las Vegas is the first city in Nevada to implement such technology.
“This is what I think a government is supposed to be about — reaching out to the people and making government relevant to everybody you know,” one of the city’s councilmen said in a recent meeting. “As a teacher and member of the community, I’m overjoyed.”
Google is finally adding translations to Gmail on mobile (via Android Police)
Did you notice anything different when you opened the Gmail app on your smartphone this week? Google added in-app translation to its mobile email platform, so if you’re receiving emails in a language other than your default, you may have been prompted to translate those messages using Google Translate.
“For years, our users have conveniently translated emails in Gmail on the web to over 100 languages,” reads a blog post from Google. “Starting today, we’re excited to announce a native translation integration within the Gmail mobile app that will enable you to seamlessly communicate in a wide range of languages.”
Rethinking large language models in medicine (via Scope)
Just like in our industry, large language models (LLMs) are spreading like wildfire across all sorts of fields: law, education, and even medicine. But each field is using them a little bit differently — in a recent paper, a team of researchers and leaders at Stanford Medicine explored the ways in which LLMs should be used in medicine.
“It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of large language models,” said Nigam Shah, chief data scientist for Stanford Health Care and one of the researchers who contributed to the paper. “We call it ‘LLM bingo,’ where people check off what these models can and can’t do. ‘Can it pass the medical exams? Check. Can it summarize a patient’s history? Check.’ While the answer may be yes on the surface, we’re not asking the most important questions: ‘How well is it performing? Does it positively impact patient care? Does it increase efficiency or decrease cost?’”
Language Industry Blogs
- A Deep Dive on Artificial Intelligence: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Works (via Phrase)
- Rush Translations for Emergencies: Preparing for the Unexpected (via Avantpage)
- AI Translation vs. Human Translation: Pros and Cons (via BLEND)
- Top 10 AI-Powered Translation Websites: Pioneering Global Communication (via Speakt)