Steve Rotter is helping global organizations turn language from a bottleneck into a competitive advantage by treating translation as core infrastructure, not a side task. As Chief Marketing Officer at DeepL, he focuses on specialized AI models that deliver near human translation quality at scale, supporting everything from contracts and healthcare information to e commerce catalogs and live conversations.

In this episode, Russ and Steve dig into why general purpose AI models struggle with nuance and context, and why DeepL has doubled down on domain specific models trained on years of proprietary data across more than 100 languages. Steve explains how this specialization leads professional translators to prefer DeepL in blind tests and why that matters when mistranslations can damage brands, misinform patients, or distort news.

They explore how DeepL fits into real workflows, from quick “two box” translations and drag and drop document conversion to API integrations that keep products like Notion and large e commerce sites up to date in many languages in near real time. Steve shares how this turns months of manual work into a continuous, automated process that opens new markets faster and makes “borderless” business more realistic than ever.

Russ and Steve also discuss trust, accuracy, and human in the loop review. Steve outlines DeepL’s layered approach, where low risk content is fully automated, higher stakes material is routed for targeted checks, and short, high impact assets like ad copy still rely on specialists. They then turn to DeepL Voice, real time multilingual meetings, and why latency and comprehension are just as critical as raw accuracy when people are trying to follow a live conversation.

Topics Covered:
[00:01] Welcome, intro, and DeepL’s AI award recognition
[00:30] Steve’s background and why he joined an AI language company
[01:02] Why language is a fundamental marketing and business challenge
[01:40] Specialized language models versus general purpose LLMs
[02:26] Blind tests and when translation quality becomes mission critical
[03:26] Capturing nuance and context across 100+ languages
[12:23] How customers use DeepL: text, documents, and APIs
[13:46] Examples from Notion and large e commerce brands
[15:39] Time to market and simultaneous multilingual launches
[21:59] Human in the loop tiers from low risk to premium content
[27:16] Borderless business and DeepL Voice in real time communication

About The Winners Circle:
The Winners Circle is hosted by Russ Fordyce, CEO and founder of Business Intelligence Group. Each episode features leaders and innovators recognized through BIG’s annual award programs across AI, innovation, sustainability, cybersecurity, and more. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Nominate your company or team for a BIG award: https://www.bintelligence.com/