Case Study: Volkswagen Group achieves faster, scalable machine translation with Microsoft Azure Stream Analytics

Machine translation speaks Volkswagen – in 40 languages

Volkswagen Group needed to translate up to a billion words a year across more than 40 languages, while keeping terminology consistent across apps, owner’s manuals, infotainment systems, and other channels. Rising translation volumes, shorter turnaround expectations, and the limits of its rules-based portal created the need for a more scalable and flexible approach. The company turned to Microsoft Azure Stream Analytics as part of a broader Azure-based translation modernization effort.

Microsoft Azure Stream Analytics helped Volkswagen build a cloud-based translation environment using Azure Cognitive Services and related Azure services to train machine translation models on VW’s own translation memories. The prototype was developed and tested in just six weeks, with promising results for Polish, Norwegian, and English. The new approach improved scalability, supported EU data residency and security requirements, enabled mobile access, and laid the groundwork for faster, higher-quality translation and future big-data use cases across the Volkswagen Group.

Volkswagen Group

Tibor Farkas

Head of IT Cloud