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Actually, on text translations, DeepL nowadays outclasses Google Translate IMHO. The only downside is that they don't appear to offer some kind of transparent w

Actually, on text translations, DeepL nowadays outclasses Google Translate IMHO. The only downside is that they don't appear to offer some kind of transparent website translate feature ("put a URL in and it translates the entire site, with layout kept intact"), at least not for free. But if I happen to have a paragraph or so in some foreign language and want that translated to some language I can understand, DeepL has become my first stop due to its consistently higher result quality.

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vinay427 6y ago
I would be prepared to switch over completely for the languages they support if DeepL didn't insert their advertisement at the bottom of some results (I've had this accidentally included in an email before), and if they had a mobile app with a text selection action on Android to highlight text and see a popup with the translation. As it is, I use it most of the time but still rely on Google Translate being more accessible. Obviously DeepL is newer, so these limitations are understandable.
- abdusco 6y ago
  > if they had a mobile app with a text selection action on Android to highlight text and see a popup with the translation I've had the same frustration, so I've written a simple script/app with Tasker (and AutoShare plugin) to select text and translate from DE -> EN. I use it quite frequently to learn German.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  One weird quirk of DeepL is that when you become a $5/mo subscriber, you can't use their free /translator page while logged in.
bobsoap 6y ago
Same here, I've been consistently surprised at how much better (and more natural/accurate) deepl is than google at translating, especially for sentences and paragraphs.
- abdusco 6y ago
  I love the feature that allows changing words with an alternative, which triggers a new translation with the new context.
abrowne 6y ago
I agree DeepL is often as good or better. (I will sometimes try both and compare. Usually I prefer about half from each, but both are fine on their own.) But DeepL doesn't support nearly as as many languages. Google Translate supports, to pick a few, Basque, Gujarati, Kazakh, Igbo and Thai. Some of those don't have a huge number of speakers, but they also have Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, Indonesian and Swahili, all in the top 20 by number of speakers. Yes, I know some of these are done through a intermediary (often English, but not always). So if you translate Ukrainian → Catalan it probably really does Ukrainian → Russian → Spanish → Catalan. But it can still be helpful to have the options.
- tomsmeding 6y ago
  Is there any way to find out what the translation path is that GTranslate takes? Background: I usually find I get better results when I translate from English to a random language X instead of from Y to X -- which is probably because it actually does Y -> English -> X. But I know more languages than Y and English, so it might be helpful to know what the "best" intermediary is, so to speak.
  - abrowne 6y ago
    Not that I know of, except by trying to find mistakes like this: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=47635 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=47635 > Google translates the Japanese word "migaku 磨く" (to polish, to brush) to the French word "polonais" (Polish, as in "of Poland"). Meaning Japanese to French must go through English and get confused by Polish/polish.
alienchow 6y ago
Anecdote disclaimer. Learning Spanish right now so I'm excited to learn about this better translator. The very first word I tested was "por favor". DeepL detected it as English and translated it into Spanish to give "por favor" == "por favor". Same for "una mas". To be fair, it worked once I properly accented the "a". I'll be using this for longer sentences instead.

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vinay427 6y ago

I would be prepared to switch over completely for the languages they support if DeepL didn't insert their advertisement at the bottom of some results (I've had this accidentally included in an email before), and if they had a mobile app with a text selection action on Android to highlight text and see a popup with the translation. As it is, I use it most of the time but still rely on Google Translate being more accessible. Obviously DeepL is newer, so these limitations are understandable.

abdusco 6y ago
> if they had a mobile app with a text selection action on Android to highlight text and see a popup with the translation I've had the same frustration, so I've written a simple script/app with Tasker (and AutoShare plugin) to select text and translate from DE -> EN. I use it quite frequently to learn German.
hombre_fatal 6y ago
One weird quirk of DeepL is that when you become a $5/mo subscriber, you can't use their free /translator page while logged in.

bobsoap 6y ago

Same here, I've been consistently surprised at how much better (and more natural/accurate) deepl is than google at translating, especially for sentences and paragraphs.

abdusco 6y ago
I love the feature that allows changing words with an alternative, which triggers a new translation with the new context.

abrowne 6y ago

I agree DeepL is often as good or better. (I will sometimes try both and compare. Usually I prefer about half from each, but both are fine on their own.) But DeepL doesn't support nearly as as many languages. Google Translate supports, to pick a few, Basque, Gujarati, Kazakh, Igbo and Thai. Some of those don't have a huge number of speakers, but they also have Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, Indonesian and Swahili, all in the top 20 by number of speakers. Yes, I know some of these are done through a intermediary (often English, but not always). So if you translate Ukrainian → Catalan it probably really does Ukrainian → Russian → Spanish → Catalan. But it can still be helpful to have the options.

tomsmeding 6y ago
Is there any way to find out what the translation path is that GTranslate takes? Background: I usually find I get better results when I translate from English to a random language X instead of from Y to X -- which is probably because it actually does Y -> English -> X. But I know more languages than Y and English, so it might be helpful to know what the "best" intermediary is, so to speak.
- abrowne 6y ago
  Not that I know of, except by trying to find mistakes like this: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=47635 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=47635 > Google translates the Japanese word "migaku 磨く" (to polish, to brush) to the French word "polonais" (Polish, as in "of Poland"). Meaning Japanese to French must go through English and get confused by Polish/polish.

alienchow 6y ago

Anecdote disclaimer. Learning Spanish right now so I'm excited to learn about this better translator. The very first word I tested was "por favor". DeepL detected it as English and translated it into Spanish to give "por favor" == "por favor". Same for "una mas". To be fair, it worked once I properly accented the "a". I'll be using this for longer sentences instead.