Keeping the Human Voice in AI Translation With DeepL

What happens to a good idea when the person who understands the problem best cannot express it confidently in the language used by the rest of the team?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Gonçalo Gaiolas, Chief Product Officer at DeepL, about real time voice translation and the work required to make a multilingual conversation feel natural. Our discussion moves from the business cost of language barriers to the technical choices behind speaker identity, tone, speed, and the handling of sensitive meeting data.

Gonçalo begins with a cost that is difficult to place on a spreadsheet. An employee may understand a local market, a product, or a customer need but struggle to contribute in the company's shared language. The organization can miss that knowledge even when the person is present in the meeting. Customers also tell DeepL that language barriers affect the time needed to make decisions and understand nuance. These are experiences he describes, rather than independently measured results presented in the interview.

Live translation introduces a demanding set of constraints. People pause, interrupt, change direction, and build meaning at different speeds across languages. A system needs enough context to produce an accurate translation while responding quickly enough to remain useful. Waiting can interrupt the flow, but responding too early can lose the meaning of the sentence. Tone creates another challenge because urgency, hesitation, and a question can carry information that the translated words alone do not capture.

We discuss DeepL's approach to retaining the characteristics of individual speakers. Gonçalo describes separating speakers and carrying elements of voice, rhythm, and emotion into the translated audio. He also explains that some original audio remains audible at a lower level. His aim is to help listeners follow who is speaking while understanding the translated conversation. He says users have options around retaining vocal identity, acknowledging that people may feel differently about using that capability.

The enterprise adoption discussion is equally practical. Gonçalo describes a desktop app intended to provide a consistent experience across Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. A global workforce may use one platform internally and encounter several others when speaking with customers and partners. For him, working across those environments is part of the product's usefulness, alongside the quality of the translati