“English has become the go-to language for international business, but the reality is that only about 20% of the world's population speaks it fluently,” said Jarek Kutylowski, CEO and Founder, DeepL. “This has a significant impact on global businesses and professionals – over half of C-level leaders spend more than an hour each day dealing with ineffective communication, a challenge that also extends to other management and leadership levels. To address this, what we’re seeing through our research is that businesses are increasingly turning to AI solutions – 72% are planning to integrate AI into daily operations, with 25% targeting specific tasks such as translation in 2025.”

Report highlights include:

• Businesses are budgeting for AI integration: in 2025, businesses will be looking more closely into how AI is bringing ROI-positive value to their organisation. Across every region, top AI budgeting allocations include business operations (28%), workplace tools (19%), and specialised tasks such as translation (25%). The Netherlands shows the highest AI spending commitment, with 30% of businesses in the nation planning to integrate AI into all operations, closely followed by Germany (29%), Belgium (28%), France (26%), and the United States (25%).
• Communication barriers are a significant issue facing global companies: as businesses expand globally and scale into new markets, language barriers are emerging as a key challenge. Market expansion (35%), engaging customers across borders (32%), and customer service (24%) are cited as the top language obstacles faced in their business while navigating this global landscape. In particular, expanding into new markets is a significant challenge for European companies operating in geographies with multiple official languages or export-driven economies – including Belgium (45%), Germany (41%), and the UK (44%) – followed by the US (37%), which represents the world's second-largest export economy. Of the markets surveyed, France (42%), the US (38%) and Belgium (38%) also reported the most significant challenges while serving customers from other markets; emphasizing the importance of robust multilingual capabilities in those regions.
• Specialised AI tools like DeepL are combatting top business communication challenges: language AI is unlocking significant growth and efficiency for global businesses, enabling them to harness language as a strategic asset to better tap into the power of communication and collaboration both internally and externally – all while driving deeper connections and expanding global reach. Businesses are merging Language AI solutions with human expertise and oversight to solve their urgent communication issues and minimise the challenges associated with cross-cultural communication – particularly in highly regulated industries with high-stakes communications, like legal and manufacturing. This includes utilising Language AI alongside external translation agencies (32%) and supporting in-house translation teams with AI (31%), to embedding AI into key products (26%).
• Internal communication is a growing priority in European markets: internal language barriers are leaving global companies struggling to effectively and efficiently move business forward. In particular, The Netherlands (31%) and France (25%) report the highest pressure to support communication between teams speaking different languages, highlighting how linguistic diversity impacts both customer engagement and workplace collaboration. DeepL’s findings are aligned with a 2024 Forbes study that found half of all knowledge workers say they are hampered by communication challenges

“In order to communicate with people from other countries, naturally, we have to use English, and it’s always urgent. It used to take staff up to half a day to translate a document created in Japanese into English. Now that we are using DeepL, we can do this task very fast,” said Shoji Otsubo, Senior Manager, Panasonic Connect.

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