Technology

From Lara to Google Translate: a short guide to translators using Ai

Translating soon, better, cheaper. That is the promise, but will it really be so?

8 December 2024

3' min read

Translating sooner, better, at lower cost. This is the promise of artificial intelligence-based translators. But one is quick to say 'AI translator': there is a world of difference behind this category of solutions. There are the generic services, such as ChatGpt and Gemini, which translate but are not their speciality. But also the consumer ones, free, from Google and Microsoft (Bing). Finally, the paid, more professional ones, which also have limited free versions. And even among the latter there are differences in specialisation and various levels of 'customisation' possible by companies using them.

In this product category, there is also a long-standing Italian player, Translated, which in November launched a new translator, Lara, for the first time also aimed at a consumer and professional audience (whereas previously it only sold services to large companies).

Let us look at some of the most popular text translators. Although some of these services also do audio/video translation (real-time or not), there are other more specialised services to consider for these functions.

Deepl

The first service name dedicated to AI translation is probably Deepl, in the world. In 33 languages, which is less than some competitors; but it manages to be faster and more accurate. It also supports attachments in various formats, has apps and browser extensions. It has a version with limited daily usage and rates from EUR 7.99 per user per month. All the paid ones have unlimited text translation and increasing limits for attachable files. Those that pay more have more glossaries (allow translations of words and short phrases to be specified) and the possibility of integration with Cat tools (computer-aided translation software).

Lara of Traslated

Lara is free up to 5,000 characters per day, then you pay $9 or $29 per month depending on usage. 'Compared to competitors, we have trained the AI model on the ability to reason and understand the context of the translation,' explains founder Marco Trombetti. It understands when the translation is uncertain and asks the user for clarification. Understanding the context makes it possible to avoid translation mistakes "such as translating the Italian words 'red earth' for a text about tennis". "It has been trained with entire documents (instead of, classically, short sentences) so that it translates better by understanding the context. It is designed to collaborate with the human translator. To optimise it, we have also trained it with texts from discussions between translators and text editors,' Trombetti summarises.

Google Translate and Microsoft Bing AI Translation Tool

Less sophisticated but free of charge are the Google and Microsoft tools, plus they support over a hundred languages. They are designed for informal, non-professional translations, e.g. when travelling. Google also translates texts within images, via camera apps (as do the integrated Samsung and Apple tools). Bing's strengths lie in its integration into all Microsoft products. It also offers video translation of live conversations (products specialised in this are Wordly.ai and Live Interpreter, which also do this for in-person meetings, not only for online video conferences; Sonyx and Happyscribe are famous instead for speech-to-text transcription and automatic translation).

Chatgpt, Gemini, CopyAI

Chatgpt has on its side the fact that it is the best known AI. We may already have a subscription to use it (the free version is limited), so we may be tempted to use it as a translator as well. Yes, it translates, but that is not its primary function. It is slower and more prone to hallucinations than specialised products, even though it supports 50 languages and even document uploads. In addition, it lacks important functionality, such as glossaries or style guides.

Another strength may be the possibility of customising the translation with a prompt (if we do not want it literal) and its integration with computer-aided translation services such as Lokalise.

Similar is the situation with Google Gemini, whose free version, however, is less limited than Chatgpt. One has to pay for a more advanced model and enter a super amount of text.

Similar to ChatGpt, but a little more specialised, is finally CopyAI. It allows you to create and translate text for marketing purposes, press releases, emails, blogs.