French language solution provider Systran Software Inc. has launched its Neural Machine Translation engine into general availability.

Systran’s Pure Neutral Machine Translation tool uses machine learning technology to provide translations that it claims are extremely close to human fluency, and in some cases, “can be even better than a human translation.”

Systran’s new translation tool is aimed at organizations and adapted for customers across industries, the company says. Using the new service, companies will be able to deploy their business strategy in multiple countries at the same time, improving their time to market, it adds.

Systran says its PNMT tool is able to translate more than 140 different language combinations, and is offering a free online demo for customers to test out its translation engine. According to the company, its neural network works by first reading and “understanding” the sentence to be translated, before translating it into the target language.

In contrast to current translation tools which use statistical and rule-based models, Systran’s tool relies on what it calls “artificial neural networks” that it claims work in a similar fashion to the human brain. Essentially, the machine learning engine is fed hundreds of thousands of texts, which allows it to become fluent in a specific language and its rules. Thus, the PNMT tool is able to read a text, understand it and then recreate it in in the target language.

“We are living in a historic moment in the field of machine translation,” said Jean Senellart, CTO of Systran Group. “We are at the very beginning of a new era that opens up horizons in multilingual communication. We are proud to place this technology in the hands of our customers and thus test it with specific business cases.”

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