Mr. Chair, as I mentioned during my presentation, one million federal users access Google Translate and other translation tools every week.
In our view, we had a duty to share our terminology and glossaries. We have already shared and translated millions of terms. Under the blueprint 2020 plan to modernize the public service, we decided to share our tools, including the one you just mentioned, to help facilitate second-language comprehension across the public service.
Teams of employees are working together to make sure that system content is up to date and of high quality.
However, the tool is intended, first and foremost, to facilitate comprehension, not to provide official translations. This summer, we conducted a pilot project with the participation of 300 public servants. Most of the communications consisted of short polite texts, emails between colleagues, and out-of-office messages. We believe it's important to have a professional translator handle an official document for the sake of quality.
There are two very important things to keep in mind regarding the translation tool. In my remarks, I pointed out that, whenever people use the tool, a very clear message appears indicating that documents of a more official nature should be translated by a translation bureau professional. We built a link directly into the tool so that users can request such a translation. If the user changes their mind, they can request the services of one of our professional translators.