DeepL Blog

We’re pleased to announce that the DeepL for Windows app is officially available for download in the Microsoft Store—allowing even more people to benefit from our powerful desktop apps.

Once downloaded, our DeepL for Windows app is integrated directly into your computer's operating system—making it the easiest and fastest way to use DeepL. A seamless experience from start to finish, it provides access to DeepL translations anywhere and everywhere you need them on your desktop.

How can our DeepL for Windows app help streamline your workflow?

• Enjoy more flexibility – translate directly while you write—in any app or tool that supports editing—with our Ctrl+Win+C shortcut

• Avoid extra work – with a Pro subscription, you can save your favorite translations for easy access, or pause translations and return to them later

• Spend less time translating – with shortcuts like Ctrl+C+C, you can paste text directly into the Desktop App, eliminating unnecessary back-and-forth

Packed with time-saving features and unparalleled flexibility, our DeepL for Windows app makes translation simple and efficient—increasing productivity and reducing effort. 

From high-quality document translation to our much-loved customization capabilities—such as alternative translations and glossary entries—our Windows app allows you to integrate DeepL into your daily workflow with ease.

Additionally, you can use your DeepL Pro subscription in the DeepL for Windows app—meaning you’ll retain full access to all the Pro benefits you know and love. Check out our DeepL for Windows app page for more details or download directly from the Microsoft Store.

In May 2022, the government of Québec passed Bill 96, which amends the province’s Charter of the French Language, initially passed in 1977. Bill 96 is the latest in numerous amendments to the charter over the past 40-plus years and affects how businesses must conduct internal communication and serve customers. As of March 2023, the bill’s initial requirements are in effect, with further amendments to be enforced in the coming months and years.

What does Bill 96 mean for businesses operating in Québec?

Québec businesses will be expected to operate in French, internally and externally. Furthermore, businesses based outside of the province but who operate or transact with customers in Québec must provide services in French. While all businesses regardless of size must comply, businesses with more than 25 employees will need to submit formal documentation to the Office of the French Language for a compliance assessment.

Businesses will be required to communicate in French in the following contexts: 

• Customer service and interaction 

• Workplace communication 

• Workplace tools, software, and internal documentation

Given these new legally binding language requirements, translation will become more important than ever in the coming years. Businesses that do not comply with the new requirements could face challenges in court. Montréal lawyer Antoine Aylwin outlines why compliance is especially important:

"Businesses should be aware of how Bill 96 will impact their operations. Companies must serve their Québec clients and customers in French, communicate with employees in French, and follow stricter hiring standards. Therefore, it is crucial for businesses to understand and adhere to the new requirements to comply with Bill 96 and to be successful within Québec." - Antoine Aylwin (Partner, Co-leader, Privacy and Cybersecurity at Fasken) 

To ensure your organization can transition successfully, DeepL offers a full suite of AI-powered translation products designed to help your business translate as seamlessly and cost-efficiently as possible. How can DeepL help businesses in Québec?

DeepL is considered the world’s most accurate AI translator. According to blind tests, professional translators chose DeepL’s translations over those of our leading competitors by a factor of 3:1—with English<>French translations consistently chosen over competitors. DeepL also guarantees maximum data security and is trusted by government agencies and law firms around the globe who translate with DeepL while keeping their data safe.  Québec’s companies will now need multiple versions of their product documentation, and DeepL is the perfect solution for simple and efficient translation—able to translate web pages, product documentation, internal tools and software, user reviews, customer service information, and more. Teams can also use our glossary feature, allowing you to customize translations with product-and-industry-specific naming conventions—ensuring translations stay consistent with your business’ terminologies.

DeepL’s translation products 

Our Advanced and Ultimate subscriptions are the most efficient way for your team to access instant, cost-effective, and accurate translations across our web translator, desktop and mobile apps, and browser extensions. Subscriptions include unlimited text and enhanced document translation capability.     Subscriptions are useful to businesses based outside of Québec who are pursuing customers within Québec—team members can email clients, provide customer service, and send translated documents all in French. They are also particularly beneficial for French-speaking teams to communicate with multilingual clients outside of Québec.   DeepL API provides an automated solution to website translation across all pages. The advanced neural networks that power DeepL’s technology mean these translations capture the nuance and context of your industry and product line. The API provides instant site translations crucial to conveying product and customer review information to potential clients. What customers are saying about DeepL DeepL's business customers in Québec are adequately prepared for the changes to the law—able to translate their internal documents, employee communication, and customer interactions with accuracy and speed. 

Users from around the globe use DeepL to translate from English to French and vice versa—and agree that the quality makes their day-to-day tasks more manageable. 

With DeepL Pro, I can translate entire documents that I have created in German directly into the languages that I mainly work with (French, English) . . . DeepL Pro is very practical and provides good translations with alternative variants. DeepL Pro makes my work much easier. - DeepL Pro for Business user, Switzerland

Want to ensure Bill 96 compliance for your organization? Contact our Sales team to learn more about how DeepL can help your organization navigate this transition. 

Our team is excited to say “환영합니다” and “Velkommen” to our Korean- and Norwegian (bokmål)-speaking users!

Korean and Norwegian (bokmål) are now available on the web translator, desktop and mobile apps, Chrome and Edge browser extensions, and the DeepL API. With these additions, we hope to reach over 80 million native speakers, as well as many more additional users from Europe, Asia, and all over the world. 

We are continuing to expand our language availability so users can communicate with friends and family abroad, write emails to colleagues—or even expand their businesses to new markets. Every new language release helps to break down communication barriers for people all over the globe.    As always, our dedicated team of engineers, researchers, and language experts conducted quality assurance checks to ensure high-quality translations. 

Try out our new Korean and Norwegian (bokmål) translation now!

The beta version of DeepL Write, our newly minted AI writing companion, is free and available for anyone to use! What is DeepL Write? DeepL Write is an AI writing tool that improves written communication in both English and German. Write tackles more than just grammar—it puts you in control of your writing by offering suggestions on phrasing, tone, style, and word choice. With so many options, you’ll never compromise your authentic voice.

Who can use DeepL Write?

DeepL Write offers something for everyone, regardless of language proficiency. Whether you need to fine-tune some phrasing in your native language or double-check accuracy in your second (or third!) language, you can use the tool to feel more confident in your writing.  Write is especially useful for professionals such as journalists, writers, or academics looking to boost their creativity through sentence, word, and rephrase suggestions. Multilingual teams in global companies can also use Write to draft clear and concise emails, campaign proposals, reports, and presentations for international clients. Why are we launching DeepL Write? Through conversations with loyal users of our translator, we found they often improve their writing by switching between source and target language—this gave us the idea to create a new tool exclusively to fine-tune written communication.  Similar to the translator, Write utilizes sophisticated neural network technology that captures the context and nuances of the original text to provide rephrasing suggestions and alternative word choices. Where can I use DeepL Write? DeepL Write is available on your desktop browser at DeepL.com/write and via the mobile website on your personal device. As DeepL Write is in the beta phase, we are constantly improving the tool to ensure accuracy in its suggestions.  DeepL Translator is already used by millions of people every single day. The addition of Write furthers our mission to build tools that help overcome communication barriers worldwide. 🌐

Questions? Check out our Help Center for more information!

The first few days of 2023 have been exciting to say the least!    Just this week we announced our partnership with four new investors—all of which are major players in the tech and communications industry: IVP, Bessemer Venture Partners, Atomico, and WiL. We’re honored to join them in this investment partnership!

Since 2017, DeepL has changed the game of AI translation with its powerful neural network technology. This latest round of funding brings our company valuation to €1B—meaning we will accelerate our world-renowned research, develop new products, support the growth of our team, and further transform how people and organizations around the world communicate. “From the very beginning our goal has been to raise the standards of AI technology. We’ve consistently invested in researching and improving the advanced neural network technology that makes such accurate translations possible,” said Jarek Kutylowski, CEO and founder of DeepL. “We see this funding round as the next step in our journey to transform DeepL into a wider communications platform through new product offerings.”  We’d like to thank our investors for their support and confidence as we dive into this new era. Our new partners have invested in tech heavy-hitters such as Slack, Dropbox, Asana, and more—we're ready to join their growing list of successful ventures. 

This would not have been possible without our loyal customers and talented team members. Together we’re building a world without communication barriers. 

If you’re interested in joining our dynamic and growing team, check out our Careers page.

2022 was a big year here at DeepL! We added new languages to the translator, released new products and features, expanded our dedicated team—and even met up as a company for the first time in years. It’s been an exciting time, and we’d like to look back on what made this year so special.  New languages Back in May, we released Turkish and Indonesian, expanding usage of the translator to millions more users worldwide. In September, we released our most requested language of the year—Ukrainian—with the hope of easing communication challenges for those relocating abroad.

As always, we tested each language release thoroughly to ensure translation accuracy reached DeepL’s high standards. New products and features First off, 2022 brought the release of the Android mobile app. Android users can now translate on the go in 29 languages. 

We also released not one, but two browser extensions: DeepL for Chrome and DeepL for Microsoft Edge. These extensions allow users to translate snippets of web pages or even their own emails as they write them—all without leaving their browser. DeepL Pro subscribers can utilize full-page translation with the new extensions. 

Finally, we expanded options on our glossary feature, adding 5 new language pairs, including English<>Japanese, English<>Italian, English<>Polish, English<>Dutch, and German<>French. We also introduced shared glossary, allowing users to share their glossary entries with team members to keep company communication consistent. 

Going global

DeepL Pro subscriptions are now available in Mexico and Singapore, enabling more users to access unlimited translation, maximum data security, and more.  

We also saw unparalleled success in Japan, with our CEO and founder Jarek Kutylowski receiving a very warm welcome at the Global Management Forum after his talk on how DeepL is helping Japanese companies go global through AI translation. 

Growing our team

We added more team members than ever before in 2022! For the first time since 2019, we brought our team together for an offsite to build collaboration, celebrate successes, and plan for the future. 

We’d like to thank our loyal users for an incredible (and inspiring) year—stay tuned for more exciting news coming up in early 2023. 

Once per month, DeepL employees participate in a company-wide Hack Friday, taking on projects outside of their day-to-day work. Hack Fridays are a great opportunity to tinker with our API, and sometimes the results make it to users. In fact, our recently released Google Sheets-DeepL script was the result of a Hack Friday project! On a Hack Friday in September 2022, DeepL software developer Marvin Becker and developer evangelist Tim Cadenbach built a prototype DeepL API add-in for Microsoft Word, making it possible for users to translate with DeepL directly in a Word document.

You can see it in action here:

Why were we interested in this integration?

Business communication is a popular DeepL use case—DeepL translations can enable a global, multilingual workforce to collaborate efficiently while keeping sensitive company data secure. We often hear requests from customers who want to build their own Office Add-in with the DeepL API and are looking for resources to get started. We wanted to learn first-hand what an integration would require so that we can provide better answers when our customers ask us questions. 

In this post, we’ll share what we learned. We'll also provide open-source code to help you get your project off the ground more quickly. Ready? Let’s build! 

Tip 0 (optional): Do a little homework  

If you’re brand new to the Office APIs, we suggest reading Understanding the Office JavaScript API in Microsoft’s documentation. In short, all Office products provide a Common API with product-specific APIs on top. It could also be helpful to skim through this tutorial before moving to Tip 1. 

Tip 1: Building a prototype with Script Lab (or use ours) 

Script Lab is an open-source project maintained by Microsoft. Script Lab makes it possible to experiment with the Office JavaScript API without leaving Excel, Outlook, Word, or PowerPoint. The Script Lab GitHub repository includes a tutorial to help you get started.

We used Script Lab to create an initial prototype of our add-in because it's an ideal way to quickly write code and see it in action—and it consists of only a single JavaScript, HTML, and CSS file.

While this initial step isn’t the add-in you can share with team members just yet, it gives you an idea of what is possible with the DeepL API and what sort of user experience you'll be able to provide with your add-in.

Earlier in the post, we promised you an open-source code! Script Lab offers a way to import someone else’s “snippet”, so we’ve open sourced the DeepL-Word snippet we created so that anyone can give it a try. You can find it in GitHub here.

You’ll also need a DeepL API key if you'd like to follow along with this step. You can sign up for an account here.

Simply copy and paste the Gist YAML as outlined in the instructions, insert your DeepL API key in the placeholder in line 32, and you'll be able to run our snippet in just a few clicks.

The best part? The Script Lab snippet can be repurposed as you're setting up the add-in template, so all the work you do in Script Lab will come in handy later.

Tip 2: Creating an Office Add-in project with the Yeoman Generator

Now that we’ve done some prototyping in Script Lab and know the basics of Office scripting, we can start to create an actual add-in using Yeoman. Yeoman is an open-source scaffolding tool that makes new projects relatively easy. For Office Add-ins, there’s a pre-made template by Microsoft you can use, often referred to as “Yo Office”. 

The process is covered here: Office Add-in Yeoman Generator.

After following the setup instructions, copy the code from Script Lab to your newly created repository. There’s more to configure, but you can get started right away by executing 'npm run start’. This will launch Word and automatically sideload your add-in. You can use any IDE for developing, though the generated template works best with Microsoft’s own code editors VS Code or Visual Studio. For a better coding and debugging experience we recommend using Visual Studio.

Tip 3: Implementing the DeepL API

Our implementation of DeepL is straightforward—a JavaScript fetch script calls the text translation endpoint. For our simple prototype, that was sufficient. If you want to enable glossaries in your add-in, you’ll need to put in a bit more work.

We didn’t use DeepL’s official Node.js client library for the project because the library isn’t meant for client-side JavaScript code. The reason here is security—you'd expose your API key when calling client-side code. You can look at the GIST file we shared above to see our approach in more detail (starting on line 102).

Tip 4: Debugging for Mac users 

In recent years, Microsoft has made significant investments to support Mac users. While Mac support is quite good for .NET Core development, it’s still not good enough for core Windows development—including Microsoft Office apps. Unfortunately, the Microsoft app versions for Mac users aren’t configured for easy debugging. Tim is a Microsoft loyalist (and MVP!), so he didn’t have any issues, but Mac user Marvin needed to download Parallels to debug properly.  Running Microsoft Office and Visual Studio code in Parallels will let you debug apps and work on the add-in properly. It's not a 100% seamless solution, but it gets the job done!

Tip 5: Sharing your add-in with users

Office Add-ins are loaded into the web view that runs in Office apps and are displayed using iFrames, so you’ll need to host it on a web server you have access to. You can read more about how to deploy and publish Office Add-ins in the Microsoft documentation. 

Once you have the add-in up and running, any Office admin can deploy it to users and groups in their organization via the Microsoft 365 admin center. Add-ins deployed via admin center are available to use right away.

Bonus: Extending your add-in to other Microsoft apps 

It’s easy to extend your add-in to other apps. Office Add-ins share a lot of components, and an add-in for one application should work in all supported applications (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, and OneNote).

However, all the apps have different events. In our Word example, we’ve been using OnTextSelected, whereas in Excel you would probably use something like OnColumnSelected or Row. To make your add-in work in other apps, add the corresponding events or actions you want your add-in to react to—it’s that simple. Most of your code can be re-used across applications.  

It’s generally recommended to turn your specific code into a function that you can re-use and call again with the application specifics you need. We suggest reading through the articles available here.

Also, there’s a nice MS Learn module that can help.

Wrapping up

We hope you found this overview helpful! If you have any questions, feel free to create an issue in the GitHub repository with the Script Lab snippet and let us know.  

We wish you all the best on your DeepL API-Microsoft Office journey. 

Developer experience is still relatively new to the corporate lexicon, and interest in the user experience of software developers has been growing steadily over the past decade-plus.  It's easy to see why! Modern software projects can be painfully complex, and mitigating this complexity means investing in tooling and resources for developers beyond the core product—from documentation, tutorials, and code samples, to community and new support channels. 

As a company that provides an API to tens of thousands of users globally, developer experience is always top of mind. Thus, we’d like to share a quick update of our work in the past year and what we have planned for the future. 

API client libraries

Client libraries are core to our developer experience efforts, allowing users to work in an ecosystem they’re familiar with and write simpler, more efficient code. 

Client libraries were the first set of open-source projects to come out of DeepL. Open source makes it easier for users to customize the libraries and to share feedback with us directly.

We released our first client library in Python in August 2021 and since then, we’ve released libraries in .NET, Node.js, PHP, and Java. One year later, in August 2022, about 7% of all DeepL API requests (representing billions of characters translated) were made with one of our client libraries—and thousands of API users made at least one request with a client library.  

In the coming year, we plan to add at least one more client library in Go, and we’ll continue to update our existing client libraries as the API adds new capabilities.  

Have ideas or feedback related to our client libraries? Create a GitHub issue in the right repository to get the conversation started. We monitor Stack Overflow for the #deepl tag too!

OpenAPI specification

In June 2022, we published an OpenAPI specification for the DeepL API. This makes it easier for users to generate clients for programming languages not yet supported by DeepL and to explore the API with Swagger UI or Postman. The spec will also make it easier for the DeepL team to maintain documentation in a consistent and efficient way. We recently rewrote our documentation based on the OpenAPI specification, making it easier for us to improve the documentation moving forward.   One such improvement we’ve planned is to add client library code examples throughout the documentation alongside the existing cURL and HTTP examples. 

You can find the OpenAPI spec in GitHub here.

API sample projects

In the past year, we’ve heard feedback from users who’d like to see more examples to use as a starting point for their own project, or to reference when integrating the DeepL API. In August 2022, we published our first ever sample project for the DeepL API—a sample script for Google Sheets that makes it possible to translate cells with DeepL. Like our other GitHub projects, this sample project is open-source under the MIT License. 

Although we’re still defining our “sample project roadmap,” we hope this is the first of many sample projects that we’ll share in GitHub. As always, feedback is welcome through opening a ticket!  

We look forward to hearing your feedback on our ongoing developer experience work. We’ll also continue investing in new API features and support for new languages and glossary pairs in DeepL. 

New to the DeepL API and ready to get started? Sign up to translate up to 500,000 characters per month for free.

3 Key Takeaways:

1. We released our first API client library in Python one year ago in August 2021 and since then, the library has been utilized by thousands of Free and Pro API users. 

2. Along with Python, we released client libraries in .NET, Node.js, PHP, and Java—as well as an OpenAPI specification. 

3. We'll continue to invest in developer experience through more client library work, documentation improvements, and code samples. 

This year’s most requested language, Ukrainian, is now live on DeepL Translator, bringing our total number of languages to 29.

Our team of researchers and engineers accelerated Ukrainian’s release to ensure high-quality translation as soon as possible. We hope this release can support Ukrainians forced to relocate abroad and those currently navigating challenging communication issues. As always, DeepL’s development of neural network technology leads the way in producing nuanced and natural-sounding AI translations. We will be making continuous qualitative improvements to our translations in Ukrainian and in all other languages we offer.  Ukrainian is now available on the web translator, desktop and mobile apps, and the API. When translating text, you can choose alternative translations for words. We also offer document translation that retains the original formatting.

For more information, visit our Help Center.

DeepL Pro subscriptions are now available in Mexico, home to many of DeepL’s most loyal users! In fact, translator usage in Mexico is among the top 10 countries worldwide. Most of our users in Mexico translate Spanish to English and Spanish to French — facilitating personal and professional communication globally. With Pro subscription capability, we’re opening premium features to 129 million people, and millions of businesses alike. DeepL Pro and DeepL Pro for Business offer individuals and organizations more tools at their fingertips, including: ♾️ Unlimited text translation  ➕ Increased number of document translations 📂 Increased file size for document translations 🔒 Maximum data security 📕 Additional glossaries 💼 Formal and informal tone 💻 CAT tool integration A DeepL Pro subscription is perfect for individual users, particularly professional translators or freelancers, to unlock DeepL's full potential through unlimited translations and customization options. If you want to enable your entire team to use translation tools, DeepL Pro for Teams will help expand communication with global partners, while ensuring tone and brand consistency across borders. Teams of 35 or more members can also utilize Single Sign-On (SSO) for maximum organizational security. For software developers and organizations who want to build their own DeepL-powered products, using the DeepL API makes it possible to integrate high-quality translations directly into websites, applications, and more. 

Mexico joins the growing number of countries offering DeepL Pro, including the EU, UK, Canada, the USA, Japan, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. To find the plan that’s best for you or your team, visit the DeepL Pro page and get started today.