Machine translation for free users

In today’s world, the most popular machine translation systems are based on neural networks and generative AI architectures. Tencent AI, a Chinese technology company, conducted a study to evaluate the quality of translations from Chinese to English. They tested several commercially available translators and compared their outputs using three key metrics for assessing the quality of machine translations: BLEU (Bilingual Evaluation Understudy), Chrf++ (character F-score), and TER (Translation Edit Rate). Participants in the study included Google Translate, DeepL, Tencent’s translator and ChatGPT.

According to the results, Google Translate won the first place, followed by DeepL in second, Tencent’s translator in third and ChatGPT in fourth. However, it's important to note that this research focused only on English-Chinese language pair, making it impossible to predict what results the translators would receive when working with Polish-English or English-Polish language pairs. Therefore, you should explore the automatic translators to select the tool for your needs.

Here are some of the best machine translators for free users:

  • DeepL - A machine translation service introduced in 2017. DeepL focuses on major global languages and currently supports 32 of them. It allows free users to translate various file formats, such as .docx, .doc, .pdf, and .pptx as well as images. Paid plans unlock additional features and file formats.
  • Google Translate - A popular machine translation service. Google Translate supports 133 languages and offers many features, including: text, document, image, website, handwriting and spoken word translation, as well as offline translation.
  • ChatGPT – A chatbot that uses the GPT model to generate responses. It can also translate texts as well as improve its output. Users can adjust style, length and formality of texts through prompts. ChatGPT supports over 80 languages, but file translation requires a paid plan.
  • Microsoft Translator – A popular cloud-based machine translation service, which supports 135 languages and offers text, image, limited speech and document translation for free users. It integrates with various Microsoft products like Edge browser, Office and Skype to facilitate translation within these applications.