Alibaba International, the global arm of the Chinese e-commerce giant, has launched an updated version of its machine translation (MT) tool, called Marco MT. According to a CNBC article, Alibaba International claims its new artificial intelligence (AI) model outperforms similar products from competitors like Google, DeepL, and OpenAI. The company’s assessment of the tool’s performance is based on the Flores benchmark, a widely recognized framework for evaluating translation accuracy.
Marco MT supports 15 languages: Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Ukrainian. According to a Tech Funding News article, Marco MT is built on Alibaba’s proprietary Qwen model and excels when it comes to “complex expressions, cultural nuances, and idiomatic language.”
Initially launched a year ago, Alibaba’s translation tool has already gained over 500,000 users among merchants who use it to create product pages tailored to their target markets. Kaifu Zhang, vice president of Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group, highlighted the tool’s capacity for improving international business operations, telling CNBC, “The idea is that we want this AI tool to help the bottom line of the merchants, because if the merchants are doing well, the platform will be doing well.”
But Alibaba’s broader vision for Marco MT extends beyond e-commerce. While the tool is already integrated into platforms such as AliExpress and Lazada, the company plans to make it accessible for other applications, including international trade and everyday communications. Zhang noted that this expansion aims to provide high-quality translations not only within Alibaba’s ecosystem, but also to individuals and enterprises outside it.
According to a News Bytes article, Alibaba sees significant potential in emerging markets, with Zhang indicating that a substantial portion of Marco MT’s active users come from developing countries. He also emphasized the demand from Europe and the Americas. Although Alibaba has not disclosed the specific pricing for Marco MT, Zhang mentioned that the tool is part of service bundles available to merchants seeking international exposure.
