{"slug": "deepl", "name": "DeepL", "category": "other", "category_name": "Other software", "description": "", "recommenders": 1, "commenters": 4, "warners": 1, "score": 0.573, "rising": 1.0, "first": "2026-06-05", "latest": "2026-10-21", "why": "I use deepl to translate to Spanish and re-write stuff that sounds too stiff.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 3, "compare": 0, "warn": 1}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1], "listed": false, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I use deepl to translate to Spanish and re-write stuff that sounds too stiff.", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["DeepL"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 802806608, "item_id": 50175413, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50175413", "by": "yuna2k", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use deepl to translate to Spanish and re-write stuff that sounds too stiff.", "excerpt": "Hi I'm from Chile! No, actually it's funny cause I write in English first, check grammar and mispellings and then I use deepl to translate to Spanish and re-write stuff that sounds too stiff.", "context": "", "use_case": "translating blog to Spanish", "switched_from": "", "story": "SOMETHING WORTH READING: About the pressure of writing"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 797141200, "item_id": 49821325, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49821325", "by": "MacNCheese23", "date": "2026-09-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "nowadays - it can not do any good translation service at all", "excerpt": "The same fate hit deepl. What most english users don't know is that translation from english to another language was always at best - horrible and not usable without much manual effort. The same goes the other way around when you are writing technical documents. Deepl however - 7-8 or more years ago was bright star - i do not say this lightly but their translation (i can only vouch for german<->english) was out of th", "context": "non-native English speaker writing technical documentation", "use_case": "German-English translation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Grammarly will send unhinged messages to all your users if you try to cancel"}]}], "who": [{"by": "GreenSalem", "context": "professional translator (quoted)", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48513641", "date": "2026-06-12"}, {"by": "jdw64", "context": "Korean speaker seeking overseas freelance work", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48414186", "date": "2026-06-05"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["translating comments", "translating blog to spanish", "german-english translation", "alternative phrasing in translation"], "compared": [{"slug": "google-translate", "name": "Google Translate", "co": 3, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 1}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50160786", "title": "SOMETHING WORTH READING: About the pressure of writing", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49811484", "title": "Grammarly will send unhinged messages to all your users if you try to cancel", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48984609", "title": "Ask HN: If you're running LLM bots on HN, can you at least report results?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48507278", "title": "\"Don't You Just Upload It to ChatGPT?\"", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48409173", "title": "Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore Story", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 2}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"warn": 1}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 802806608, "item_id": 50175413, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50175413", "by": "yuna2k", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use deepl to translate to Spanish and re-write stuff that sounds too stiff.", "excerpt": "Hi I'm from Chile! No, actually it's funny cause I write in English first, check grammar and mispellings and then I use deepl to translate to Spanish and re-write stuff that sounds too stiff.", "context": "", "use_case": "translating blog to Spanish", "switched_from": "", "story": "SOMETHING WORTH READING: About the pressure of writing"}, {"id": 797141200, "item_id": 49821325, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49821325", "by": "MacNCheese23", "date": "2026-09-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "nowadays - it can not do any good translation service at all", "excerpt": "The same fate hit deepl. What most english users don't know is that translation from english to another language was always at best - horrible and not usable without much manual effort. The same goes the other way around when you are writing technical documents. Deepl however - 7-8 or more years ago was bright star - i do not say this lightly but their translation (i can only vouch for german<->english) was out of th", "context": "non-native English speaker writing technical documentation", "use_case": "German-English translation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Grammarly will send unhinged messages to all your users if you try to cancel"}, {"id": 783849553, "item_id": 48990597, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48990597", "by": "jdw64", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used to use DeepL, but after getting flagged once on HN, I stopped using LLMs.", "excerpt": "Actually, if you use an LLM translator to post on Hacker News, it gets flagged immediately. HN doesn't even allow LLMs as translators. So I use Google Translate when I need to translate sentences I don't know. (I think HN itself probably uses something like fangram on the database side to check AI similarity for new comments.) Even translation gets flagged immediately if it's done with an LLM, so I think actual LLM-g", "context": "", "use_case": "translating comments", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: If you're running LLM bots on HN, can you at least report results?"}, {"id": 776218258, "item_id": 48513641, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48513641", "by": "GreenSalem", "date": "2026-06-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Then came DeepL\u2014same idea.", "excerpt": "Despite the protests, he admits using AI and then charging his clients full price... \"But maybe I will ask Claude\u2019s opinion, and if one of the suggestions is smart\u2014cutting a paragraph, for instance, or clarifying a sentence\u2014I might accept it. When I started translating 15 years ago, we used to paste uncooperative sentences into Google Translate to see if it had interesting ways to phrase things differently. Then came", "context": "professional translator (quoted)", "use_case": "alternative phrasing in translation", "switched_from": "Google Translate", "story": "\"Don't You Just Upload It to ChatGPT?\""}, {"id": 774626976, "item_id": 48414186, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48414186", "by": "jdw64", "date": "2026-06-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I keep a machine translator and DeepL open next to it.", "excerpt": "Maybe it would be better to use an AI translator. Because GPT has AI memory features, right? So when it translates, it often doesn't include hyphens or em dashes. But if you use a Korean translator, it has a function to attach hyphens to the language (kind of like Google Translate). In Korea, it's not that difficult to input an em dash because you can type it using '\u3131 + chinese characterbutton' (both based on the Kor", "context": "Korean speaker seeking overseas freelance work", "use_case": "translating comments", "switched_from": "", "story": "Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore Story"}]}