Papago App Records 10 Million Monthly Active Users Driven by Accuracy and Practicality
Papago App Records 10 Million Monthly Active Users Driven by Accuracy and Practicality
Papago App Records 10 Million Monthly Active Users Driven by Accuracy and Practicality
- Monthly usage of Papago, including the web version, exceeds 17 million users in Korea and abroad
- Papago undergoes continuous improvement, leveraging competitive underlying technologies… provides a wide range of features beneficial for overseas travelers and language learners
June 21, 2023
NAVER Cloud (CEO Kim Yoo-won) announced on June 21 that the global monthly active users (MAU) of the artificial intelligence (AI) translation app “Papago” exceeded 10 million*. This figure is an approximate 30% increase compared to last year, and the MAU of Papago’s web version also recorded around 7.4 million, securing its position as a leading translation service in Korea.
* Calculated using Papago’s internal data.
Papago has maintained the top position in the translation app category for six consecutive years in Korea. Papago’s overseas popularity is also on the rise. International users have increased by 1.5 times compared to the previous year, with over 3 million monthly overseas users. In particular, users from Japan, Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, and North America demonstrate significant usage.
The ongoing growth trend of Papago is attributable to its consistent AI technology research and quality improvement for enhanced usability. Based on its unique neural machine translation (NMT) technology, Papago currently supports translation in 15 languages.* It is also utilized in various services, including the NAVER app, NAVER Whale, and LINE.
* Korean, English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Portuguese, Italian, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Hindi
Papago is strengthening its competitiveness by advancing machine translation technology and various underlying technologies. In 2020, Papago implemented Hierarchical Text Structuring (HTS), which analyzes sentence structures in images to translate the text while considering the context. In 2021, Papago developed the “Inpainting” technology, which removes text from original photos to create natural background images. These technologies are applied to Papago’s image translation service, providing users with more accurate and readable results. As a result, the usage of Papago’s “Instant Translation” and “Augmented Reality (AR) Real-time Translation” features have seen a fivefold increase in usage since their release.
Based on its exceptional technologies, Papago has consistently released new services to enable users to utilize Papago in various situations. Notably, “Papago Edu” was launched in 2021 to help users to learn languages more easily on mobile devices. When taking a photo of the text with the “Learning Camera,” you can view the key vocabulary along with the translation. Starting with English, Papago Edu is expanding to Japanese, Chinese, and more. In February this year, the service launched “Edu Vocabulary” that allows users to save the vocabulary they want to learn. As of June, 1.1 million users are using Papago Edu monthly, especially those in their teens and 20s.
“By actively addressing the needs for an accurate and practical translation service, we have established Papago as a leading translation app beloved by many users,” said Shin Joong-hwi, executive director for Papago at NAVER Cloud. He added, “Papago will continue with technological research to advance translation performance and convenience, strengthening its global competitiveness.” <END>