Translation within the federal government House of Commons Standing Committee on Official Languages April 11, 2016 donald.barabe@bell.net

Purpose of the presentation Review : the issue of machine translation and its implementation within the federal government; the Translation Bureau’s mandate and financing model. Answer Committee members’ questions

Machine translation (MT) World context 400M pages/day translated on Google equal to the Bureau’s entire annual production each and every 5 seconds… 24/7 European Union offers machine translation to its citizens.

Machine translation (MT) (cont’d) Federal context One million Google translations requested by federal civil servants1 Texts from the Government of Canada loaded on servers of a company subject to the Patriot Act MT used in the federal government since the early 1970s (Meteo) Implementation of social medias creates demand for instantaneous translation 1 D. Achimov, Translation Bureau CEO, House of Commons Standing Committee on Official Languages, 03. 07. 2016

Machine translation (MT) (cont’d) Four conditions for success no classified texts for personal information professional revision previous to any distribution non-contamination of text corpus by erroneous translations

Translation Bureau’s mandate and financing model Three important dates in the history of the Bureau: 1934 1993 1995

Translation Bureau’s mandate and financing model (cont’d) 1934: Enactment of the Translation Bureau Act The use of Bureau’s services is mandatory. The Bureau must make all translations requested by departments and Parliament. The Bureau is financed through parliamentary appropriations.

Translation Bureau’s mandate and financing model (cont’d) 1993 Bureau is transfered from Secretary of State (now Canadian Heritage) to the Department of Supply and Services (now Public Services and Procurement Canada) From a component of the country’s social fabric, translation becomes an ‘’administrative service’’. The Bureau’s mandate and financing model stay unchanged.

Canadian linguistic duality le 12 mars 2007

Canadian linguistic duality (cont’d) 2 Statistics Canada, 2011 Census 11.4% Canada 719 650 NCR 44.4% 17.5% 8.9% 4.6% 3.3% 6.8% 5% 9.1% 11.5% 42.6% 4.7% 33,.% 10.5% 12.3% Percentage of the bilingual population2 17.5 % of the Canadian population is bilingual Translation is an essential bridge between cultures and communities

Mandat et financement du Bureau de la traduction (suite) 1995: Bureau becomes a special operating agency (SOA). Bureau services go from mandatory to optional, except for Parliament. Bureau has to recover its full costs, except for services to Parliament. Bureau services are no longer free for departments.

Translation Bureau’s mandate and financing model (cont’d) Difficulties : Mandatory for the Bureau to meet any translation demand but optional for departments to use the Bureau Full costs recovery means billing departments for certain costs for which they are not appropriated (eg. rent, insurance) Bureau prohibited to bid on departments’ translation contracts More procurement authorities in translation to departments than to the Translation Bureau

Translation Bureau’s mandate and financing model (cont’d) Unintended consequences: Translations delayed or cancelled Higher costs to government as some departments create their own internal translation units Fragmentation of federal buying power, which contributes to the fragmentation and vulnerability of the Canadian translation industry

Conclusion Machine translation is a useful tool, if used properly. The Translation Bureau is a key component of the infrastructure that Canada has established to operate as a bilingual country. Unfortunately, it is underused.

Recommendations Machine translation Ensure the four conditions are applied for a successful implementation of the machine translation software Educate departments on the benefits and limitations of MT and on issues relating to the Official Languages Act

Recommendations (cont’d) Translation Bureau Review the Bureau’s location within the federal government Correct difficulties and unintended consequences Use the Bureau’s expertise to: eliminate duplication of costs; translate what the private sector should not translate and what it would not translate; consolidate the federal buying power in order to promote the development of the Canadian translation industry.