Are you also tired of finding the perfect AI Translation Tools to cross the language barriers? If so, you are at the right place!
As a researcher, I often need to deal with international sources and documents. Sometimes it's really difficult for me to translate important texts from different languages to proceed with my research work.
I used to rely on human translators which was time-consuming and expensive. That's why I decided to initiate my study on AI translation tools to help bridge communication gaps quickly and affordably.
Did you know? The AI translation software market is estimated to be worth US$ 8 billion in 2023 and is forecasted to reach US$ 37 billion by 2033, growing at a CAGR of 16.5%.
Here, I will share with you my top 10 picks for the best AI translation software currently available based on criteria like accuracy, supported languages, features, pricing, and ease of use.
What is AI Translation Tool?
AI-powered translation tool utilizes advanced machine learning algorithms to automatically translate text or speech from one language into another.
Unlike traditional rule-based machine translation, AI translation tools can analyze large volumes of multilingual data to gain a deeper understanding of the complexities and nuances of human languages.
This produces more accurate and natural-sounding translations compared to earlier statistical and rules-based machine translation methods.
AI translation tool is known for its speed, scalability, and cost. They can translate high volumes of content instantly without human effort, making it ideal for companies frequently dealing with multilingual content.
Some of the most popular AI translation tools include Google Translate, Microsoft Translator, and DeepL.
These AI software use neural machine translation, which employs deep neural networks to encode the input text into a numeric representation and then decode it into the target language.
Top 10 AI Translation Tools in 2024
Let me introduce you to the 10 widely used AI Translation tools in the last 2 years. Need a quick rundown? Check out the table!
| AI Translation Tools | Price (Starting) | Ratings |
|---|---|---|
| 1. DeepL | $10.49 per month | 4.6/5 (G2) |
| 2. Google Translate | Free to use | 4.6/5 (G2) |
| 3. Amazon Translate | $15.00 per million characters | 4.4/5 (G2) |
| 4. Microsoft Translator | $10 per million characters | 4.3/5 (G2) |
| 5. Alexa Translations | $15,000 for premium pack | 4.3/5 (G2) |
| 6. Unbabel | $0.00055 per word | 4.6/5 (G2) |
| 7. Smartling | $500 per month | 4.5/5 (G2) |
| 8. Wordly | $100/hour for up to 500 users | 4.4/5 (G2) |
| 9. Sonix | $22 per user per month | 4.7/5 (G2) |
| 10. Yandex Translate | Free to use | 4.1/5 (G2) |
1. DeepL
DeepL, a neural machine translation service, is a product of DeepL SE, a company based in Cologne, Germany.
Launched in August 2017, DeepL initially offered translations between seven European languages and has since expanded to support 31 languages.
This AI translation service uses a proprietary algorithm with convolutional neural networks (CNNs) trained with the Linguee database, resulting in translations that sound more natural than those provided by competing services.
Key Features of DeepL
DeepL's key features are designed to simplify workflows, save time, and scale translation needs without compromising quality.
It offers alternative translations, allowing you to adjust translations to suit your context. DeepL Pro bypasses the free translator's character limit, enabling unlimited text translation via the web and desktop apps.
It also maintains the original formatting of translated documents and allows editing of translated documents. You can adjust the tone of your translation by selecting either a formal or informal tone of voice.
DeepL Pro also integrates with leading computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools like Trados Studio, memoQ, and Across.
Additionally, it provides access to DeepL Pro translations in your CAT tool, allowing you to pre-translate your files automatically, enrich your translation memories, and keep your text’s original formatting.
DeepL Pricing
2. Google Translate
Google Translate is a free multilingual neural machine translation service developed by Google to translate text, documents, and websites between over 100 languages.
It offers a website interface, mobile apps for Android and iOS, and an API to help developers build browser extensions and software applications.
Google Translate uses advanced neural machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide fast and accurate translations.
Since its launch in 2006, it has grown to be the most widely used translation tool globally with over 500 million daily users. It has helped connect people and make information more accessible by breaking down language barriers.
It continues to improve and add new features like offline translations, camera translations, and speech translations based on user feedback.
Key Features of Google Translate
The key capabilities of Google Translate include text translation, speech translation, image translation, document translation, and website translation.
It offers instant text translation with a floating button and has gesture support for accessibility. The tool provides the ability to have real-time conversations by translating speech simultaneously.
It allows camera-based instant text translation by detecting languages automatically. You can download languages for offline translation when there is no network connectivity. The service enables the translation of entire web pages by entering the URL.
It also lets you upload documents like PDFs and DOCX to translate while preserving the original formatting.
Additional key features are the ability to contribute translations to improve quality, save translations for quick access across devices, handwrite input including characters not on the keyboard, and voice input support.
Google Translate Pricing
3. Amazon Translate
Amazon Translate is a cloud-based machine translation service powered by advanced machine learning technologies.
It is designed to deliver fast, high-quality, and affordable translations, making it an ideal solution for a wide range of use cases.
Amazon Translate is a neural machine translation service, which means it uses deep learning models to provide more natural-sounding and accurate translations than traditional statistical and rule-based translation algorithms.
Amazon Translate is continually improving, offering fluent and accurate translations that can be customized to define unique terms such as brand names and model names.
Key Features of Amazon Translate
Amazon Translate's key features include broad language coverage, and supporting translations between 75 languages.
It offers both batch and real-time translation capabilities, which can be integrated into applications with a single API call.
This AI-powered translation tool also provides customizable output through features like Active Custom Translation (ACT) and Custom Terminology. ACT lets you customize machine-translated output on Amazon Translate without building or maintaining a custom translation model.
Custom Terminology, on the other hand, allows you to define how terms or names that are unique to certain organizations, domains, and industries get translated.
This can result in cost savings and faster translations as it decreases the number of translations that need to be edited by professional translators.
Amazon Translate also supports automatic language detection and can handle both plain text and HTML documents in real-time.
Amazon Translate Pricing
4. Microsoft Translator
Microsoft Translator is a cloud-based machine translation service provided by Microsoft that allows you to translate text, speech, images, websites, and documents between over 100 languages.
It uses advanced neural machine translation technology to deliver fast, accurate, and natural-sounding translations.
Microsoft Translator is integrated into many Microsoft products like Office, Bing, Edge, and Skype as well as available via mobile apps and API access.
It helps break down language barriers for both personal and business use with features optimized for travel, communication, education, and global business.
Microsoft Translator continues to add new languages, features, and capabilities over time as Microsoft leverages the latest AI advances in natural language processing.
Key Features of Microsoft Translator
Microsoft Translator enables real-time conversations between multiple participants, providing live captions and translations to ensure everyone is on the same page.
For those times when you're without internet, Microsoft Translator offers offline packs, allowing you to translate text even when you're offline.
This AI translation tool also excels in translating text in various formats, be it in photos, documents, or websites.
For travelers, a phrasebook with common travel phrases is available, making it easier to navigate foreign lands.
Speech translation is another key feature, allowing you to translate spoken words into text in different languages.
Microsoft Translator Pricing
5. Alexa Translations
Alexa Translations is an AI-powered translation solution that specializes in providing high-quality, industry-specific translations for the legal, financial, and securities sectors.
Alexa Translations uses advanced Neural Machine Translation (NMT) technology to provide fast and accurate translations for complex documentation.
With the capability to translate 30,000 words per minute, it can handle high-volume content while maintaining precision.
Alexa Translations is tailored to meet specialized terminology needs across industries through advanced training on relevant data.
The Key Features of Alexa Translations
Alexa Translations include high-speed translation capabilities, processing 30,000 words per minute with near-human accuracy.
Alexa Translations seamlessly integrates with applications like Microsoft Office and Google Drive for efficient collaboration.
It offers smooth communication through speech-to-text translation and easy sharing of files between team members.
This AI tool provides extended API connections to enable real-time translation of websites and digital content. Alexa Translations automatically detects source languages and suggests relevant phrases during translation.
It also includes a built-in CAT editor, translation memory, terminology database, and project management tools to optimize workflows.
Alexa Translations Pricing
6. Unbabel
Unbabel is the first Language Operations Platform powered by AI, serving as a trusted partner for seamless cross-cultural communication.
Notably, Unbabel is trusted by leading brands worldwide and offers a unique blend of AI and human review to ensure high-quality translations tailored to your business needs.
Its dynamic workflows allow you to customize translations to align cost, speed, and quality with your market or content type.
Unbabel also integrates seamlessly with your favorite apps and platforms to translate your existing workflows for a global stage.
Key Features of Unbabel
Unbabel offers quality Intelligence reporting for optimizing translations and managing language operations. Unbabel supports over 130 languages including Chinese, Arabic, French, German, and more.
It also comes with Dynamic workflows to customize translations for speed, cost, and quality by market or content.
In addition, Unbabel provides you the Real-time visibility into translation quality and performance and Integrations with leading CRM, CMS, and communication platforms.
Unbabel Pricing
7. Smartling
Smartling is a leading cloud-based, AI-enabled translation platform that empowers teams to collaborate in real-time, creating experiences that customers love.
It is recognized as one of the #1 translation solutions, combining a Neural Machine Translation Hub with professional language services.
Smartling's technology is highly reliable, and it prioritizes customer experience, helping businesses realize significant gains in translation and localization efficiency.
It is designed to reduce translation time to market, and it can be used with your own translators or Smartling’s in-house translators for content localization.
Key Features of Smartling
Smartling's key features include automated content ingestion through integrations, proxy, or API, which makes content instantly available for translation, eliminating 90% of the manual effort.
It also offers predictive machine learning tools for automated quality checks and guarantees quality with Smartling Language Services.
This AI-backed platform is equipped with technology like automation, translation memory, and Neural MT, which combined with cost estimating and translation savings reports, can reduce translation costs by up to 70%.
Smartling also provides a range of enterprise features and integrations to major platforms, making it easy to use and cost-effective.
Smartling's Pricing
8. Wordly
Wordly, an advanced AI-driven translation solution that offers precise live translations and captions for meetings and events across a spectrum of languages.
It works by using advanced machine learning algorithms to analyze speech and text data to provide high-quality, real-time translation output.
Wordly aims to improve communication and increase inclusivity for multilingual audiences by enabling seamless translation across 25+ languages.
It integrates with all major conference platforms and can be used for a wide range of events including webinars, town halls, training sessions, and conferences.
Impressively, Wordly has already been used by over 800 organizations and 2 million users globally across various industries like technology, healthcare, education, finance, and more.
Key Features of Wordly
Wordly provides live translation and captions for meetings and events in 25+ languages including Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, and more.
It works with all major conference platforms including Zoom, WebEx, GoToMeeting, Microsoft Teams, etc.
Wordly also includes high-quality neural machine translation output, voice translation and captioning services for on-demand videos, and a translation blocklist feature.
Some other notable features are the ability to display multi-language captions live on stage, account usage alerts, session transcripts, glossaries, continuous optimization for higher accuracy, and configurable data storage.
It also provides natural-sounding voice translation and subtitling services. For videos, Wordly offers AI transcription, captions, and subtitles in 30 international languages quickly and affordably.
Wordly Pricing
9. Sonix
Sonix is another industry-leading automated transcription and translation platform that utilizes advanced artificial intelligence and natural language processing technology to deliver fast, accurate, and affordable audio and video transcription services.
Sonix can transcribe audio/video files in over 38 languages and offers seamless integration with popular third-party tools and workflows, making it a trusted choice for millions of users worldwide.
It aims to simplify audio/video content creation and accessibility for businesses, creators, researchers, and more.
Key Features of Sonix
Sonix offers an online editor for easy transition customization, allowing you to tweak your transcripts for optimal results.
Sonix's AI and NLP technologies ensure accurate transcripts, enhancing the quality of the output. This AI translation tool also includes a media player translation toggle, enabling you to switch between different languages with a single click.
Additionally, Sonix offers a side-by-side translation comparison feature for easy reference and polishing of translations.
It also includes a multi-language subtitle creator, making it easy to create subtitles in dozens of languages with just one click.
These features not only increase content accessibility for audiences with hearing impairments but also streamline workflows, reduce operational costs, and increase productivity.
Sonix Pricing
10. Yandex Translate
Yandex Translate is a powerful tool that breaks down language barriers, enabling seamless communication across diverse cultures and markets.
Developed by Yandex, it leverages advanced machine translation technology to provide high-quality translations in over 100 languages.
Yandex Translate is not just a text translator; it's a comprehensive solution that translates documents, images, and entire websites, making it an invaluable asset for businesses aiming to expand globally and individuals seeking to broaden their understanding of different cultures.
With its user-friendly interface and robust capabilities, Yandex Translate is a reliable companion for effective multilingual communication.
Key Features of Yandex Translate
Yandex Translate supports translation for more than 100 languages, ensuring a wide range of linguistic coverage.
One of its standout features is website translation, where you can input a URL and have the entire website translated into your chosen language.
Additionally, Yandex Translate offers document and image translation, supporting various formats and sizes, making it a comprehensive solution for all translation needs.
It also provides dedicated 24/7 support, ensuring that assistance is always available for any queries or issues.
Furthermore, Yandex Translate uses a hybrid model of machine translation that includes both neural network (deep learning) and statistical approaches, ensuring accurate and contextually appropriate translations.
Yandex Translate Pricing
How Do AI Translation Tools Compare to Human Translators?
AI translation tools and human translators each have their own strengths and weaknesses, and their effectiveness can vary depending on the context and requirements of the translation task.
AI translation tools, also known as machine translation, rely on algorithms and computational models to automatically translate text from one language to another.
These AI-backed tools are fast, efficient, and can handle large volumes of content quickly, making them ideal for time-sensitive projects or tasks involving repetitive translations. They are also more cost-effective than human translators, especially for high-volume content.
However, while AI translation tools are continually improving, they can sometimes misinterpret translations, pick up wrong words, or produce translations that don't make sense. These AI tools may also struggle with specialized or nuanced material.
On the other hand, human translators possess an in-depth understanding of both the source and target languages and can take context, idiomatic expressions, and cultural nuances into account when translating text.
This allows human translators to produce translations that are accurate, in-depth, and linguistically appropriate. Many human translators are also experts in specific fields, ensuring the use of precise terminology for various industries or domains.
However, human translation is more time-consuming and can be more expensive than AI translation.
In terms of accuracy, while AI translation tools are improving, they still can't match the accuracy of human translators, especially for complex or industry-specific content.
FAQs on AI Translation Tools
How accurate is AI translation?
AI translation accuracy varies greatly depending on factors like language, text complexity, and training data. Leading providers like DeepL now achieve near-human-level accuracy in some cases but still lack nuanced understanding.
What content works best for AI translation?
AI translation performs best with simpler, more literal texts like user manuals and technical documentation. Performance declines with informal, conversational content full of cultural references and wordplay.
How much does AI translation tool cost?
Many providers offer free plans for basic usage. Paid plans for power users and businesses cost ~$10-20 per month for unlimited text translations generally. Some charge per word or offer enterprise pricing.
What languages do the top AI translation tools support?
The number of supported languages varies by tool, but most top AI translation tools including DeepL and Wordly support at least 20-30 languages, with some tools like Yandex Translate and Google Translate supporting over 100 languages.
Can AI translation tools translate complex legal or medical documents?
AI translation tools can provide a rough translation of complex documents, but they may struggle with specialized terminology and concepts. For accurate translations of legal or medical documents, it is recommended to use a professional human translator with expertise in the specific field.
Are AI translation tools secure for sensitive content?
Security varies by tool, but top AI translation tools like Microsoft Translator, Amazon Translate, and more offer encryption and other security measures to protect your data. Be sure to review the security features and policies of each tool before using it for sensitive content.
Your Turn: Break The Language Barrier Now!
As we have seen, AI-powered translation tool offers immense value in breaking down language barriers and enabling communication across cultures.
From free options like Google Translate and Yandex Translate to paid solutions like DeepL and Alexa Translations, these AI-backed tools offer convenient and accurate translations in seconds.
With their speed, accuracy, and scalability, these artificial intelligence tools boost productivity and cut costs for both individuals and organizations.
While no tool is 100% perfect, the AI translation tool is now able to capture context, emotion, and nuance remarkably well as compared to previous glitches, and its accuracy and efficiency are continually improving.
From my research and experience, I've shared my top 10 recommendations. Now, it's your turn to take the leap and break the language barrier. Try out these AI translation tools and see how they can enhance your communication and understanding.
