Official Languages Committee on March 7th, 2016

[Sally Thornton]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you again.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Welcome.

This afternoon, from the translation bureau at the Department of Public Services and Procurement, we are hearing from Donna Achimov, chief executive officer; Adam Gibson, vice-president of linguistic services; and David Schwartz, vice-president of corporate services.

Welcome to the Standing Committee on Official Languages. As I mentioned earlier, we'll have to end the meeting at 5:30, because someone else needs the room.

You may go ahead with your presentation, Ms. Achimov.

[Donna Achimov, Chief Executive Officer, Translation Bureau, Department of Public Works and Government Services]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

I want to thank you for this opportunity to provide an overview of our mandate at the translation bureau and how we work eagerly to support the government and official languages, as well as the language tools that we are developing to support a bilingual public service.

Joining me today is Adam Gibson, our vice-president of linguistic services, and David Schwartz, until recently vice-president of corporate services.

The translation bureau's mandate is to provide government translation, interpretation, closed captioning, and terminology services. We are the sole in-house service provider to one of the world's largest consumers of translation services—the Government of Canada. This makes us a major player in what is in every sense a global business.

We translate 354 million words a year, of which 44 million are translated for Parliament. We also translate regulations, scientific publications, policy briefs, contracts, and trade agreements.

We enable government officials and ministers to exchange ideas and negotiate with their counterparts all over the world. We do this by offering translation services in more than 100 languages and dialects. We provide interpretation services for over 2,000 parliamentary meetings, 1,800 official language conferences, and 500 foreign language conferences.

We also provide 2,500 sign language interpretation assignments for deaf and hard of hearing public servants and parliamentarians, and live simultaneous closed-captioning in English and French for all House of Commons and Senate proceedings.

I'd like to take a moment to point out that at today's committee we have talented interpreters who are providing these sessions in both official languages. They're at the back of the room.

I'm proud to say the superb skills of not only our interpreters, but also our translators, are often mentioned by colleagues in other governments. The translation bureau is recognized as a world leader in language services and innovation, on par with the United Nations, the European Union, and other organizations.

Here is a bit about our history, with some high-level facts.

The translation bureau was created in 1934 under the authority of the Secretary of State department. In 1993 the government decided to amalgamate most common services into one portfolio. The translation bureau was moved to Public Works and Government Services Canada, with the rationale being that the bureau does extensive procurement with the private sector and should be housed with the rest of the government's procurement activities.

In 1995, we were made a special operating agency by Treasury Board. This meant that we became an optional service and we had to generate revenues. That decision laid the groundwork for making our operations more cost-effective and competitive by giving departments and agencies the authority to purchase translation services directly from the private sector.

In 2004, Treasury Board made a second decision to make the bureau the sole employer of translators in the public service.

Today, thanks to a combination of hard work and the willingness to innovate, we have retained 80% of the government's business.

As far back as the 1970s, we set out to explore how technology could support our operations, the public service, and Canadians. In the following years, the bureau was asked by provinces and the public service to share its terminology and glossaries.

In response to this, in 1999, we launched our first computer-based language tool, Termium Plus. It has since evolved from a fee-for-subscription French/English database on CD-ROMs to an online repository of more than 4 million terms in English and French. Today, it is available to everyone, free of charge through the Government of Canada's Language Portal. Last year, it was used over 61 million times by students, Canada's language industry, and internationally.

Over the past 15 years, we have steadily increased our use of automated tools, alongside the rest of the major players in the language industry, with tools such as translation memory databases and computer-assisted translation.

Most recently, we realized that we needed to do even more in order to keep pace with the rapid changes and access to free and sophisticated information and communications technologies. In order to stay relevant and to offer government quality, we knew we had to rethink the way we offered our services and the way we worked.

Let me be clear, our use of technology does not in any way replace professional translators or interpreters. Rather, it has allowed us to be more efficient, to lower our costs while maintaining our high quality.

In recent years, the size of our operations at the bureau has been shaped by two forces: increasingly competitive and innovative Canadian language service providers that our departmental colleagues and clients can turn to at any time; and changing trends in government communications, and the rise of social media and plain language. This has led to an overall reduction in the volume of our translation business. As business volumes shifted and turnaround times shrunk, the translation bureau had to improve its scalability.

Let me emphasize, no translator has lost his or her job at the bureau because our business model has changed. We are smaller today because we do not need the same number of people to do the work that we once did. We've reduced the number of positions in our organization through attrition. I need to be clear here, that's through voluntary departures, primarily through retirements.

How we build, use, and disseminate technology at the bureau is not only a big part of our business model, it's how we support efforts to advance bilingualism across the public service. Today, in the federal public service, there are one million uses of Google translate every single week and all government desktops are equipped with Microsoft translator. A simple right-click on the mouse gives you translation free, any time of day.

These tools are being used for work-related purposes every single day. They are very helpful, but they come with a risk. Our newest desktop tool, developed by the National Research Council of Canada, helps mitigate this risk. It puts translated texts and vocabulary tailored to the public service workplace and terms specific to government at the fingertips of public servants for the primary purpose of comprehension. When using this tool, simple translations are not done in a cloud offshore, they stay inside the Government of Canada's firewall.

We loaded the tool with millions of professionally translated government-specific terms and phrases to make it easier for public servants to function effectively at work in their acquired official language. It is a better and more secure alternative, meant to aid comprehension, to give public servants the confidence to practice their second official language and work in it more often.

This is not a tool meant to translate colloquialisms, such as “it's raining cats and dogs”, or to be used to translate official government documents. Over time, as more government-specific translated terms and phrases are loaded into it and the translation bureau's linguistic professionals play their role in ensuring its quality, the more sophisticated it will become.

It's worth noting that it is also the kind of tool that millennials, the next generation of public servants, expect in a modern workplace. They're heavy users of similar tools on their own personal mobile devices and they expect to have them at work.

We know the more literate and equipped our public servants are to function in both official languages, the better they will become at serving Canadians in the language of their choice.

In concluding my remarks today, I would like to recognize the extraordinary co-operation we have enjoyed with our colleagues at the National Research Council of Canada. This partnership, with people who work at the leading edge of technological innovation in Canada, has opened our eyes to the possibilities of the future.

In closing, as the translation bureau's CEO, I am very proud of the work of our translators, interpreters, and linguistic professionals, and the teams who support our efficient operations. We are all committed to official languages and to supporting the public service to communicate in both official languages.

Finally, I want to acknowledge the vibrant and committed network of official languages champions across the public service. They helped us pilot our newest machine translation tool, just as they have consistently supported all our efforts to encourage the use of official languages in the public service workplace.

Thank you for your time and attention, and we are happy to answer any questions you have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you kindly, Ms. Achimov.

To my colleagues who had expressed a desire to have two or three meetings with translation bureau officials, I would just point out that we are setting the stage today.

Now we'll get right into questions with Ms. Boucher.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Good afternoon. Thank you for your presentation, Ms. Achimov. It was very appreciated.

Translation is an important issue today, but I'd like to pick up on the matter of social media. Like it or not, we now have no choice but to stay on top of technology and to make use of these tools.

In light of the growing place of social media in federal institutions and our communications, what mechanisms have you put in place to meet your language obligations and ensure accurate translations and correct terminology?

[Donna Achimov]

Thank you for your question. I will answer with Mr. Gibson's help.

Quality is paramount to us. It doesn't matter whether we are dealing with tweets, social media text, or briefing notes. It all boils down to the same thing: quality is key.

[Adam Gibson, Vice-President, Linguistic Services, Translation Bureau, Department of Public Works and Government Services]

I would just like to add something. With the rise of social media, we are receiving more and more requests for short texts. So we have a few services to ensure the best quality possible. When we see that a department is on the verge of launching a major initiative, we expect to receive numerous tweets and many more requests for shorter texts. In that case, we provide the client with the services of another translator who is closer to the work and who can do the translation more quickly, while maintaining quality, even for short texts. In the meantime, when we receive short texts, we can provide service on an urgent basis, because we understand that social media requests are always urgent. People want an answer quickly, and it's hard to do that manually, so we offer other services tailored to the new work reality presented by social media.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Thank you. That definitely answers my question.

On another note, the translation bureau made the decision to install a translation tool on the computers of all federal employees by April 1, 2016. Can you explain what the tool is? What is the tool's impact on the quality of translated documents? Will you make sure that the translation is done well? Will the translator control the quality of the translation before documents are distributed?

[Donna Achimov]

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.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Very well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you.

It is now over to Mr. Bélanger, who had questions about the translation bureau earlier.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Have any translation bureau positions been eliminated in the past few years? If so, what kinds of positions were eliminated? How many positions were eliminated? Will more positions be eliminated in the near future? What are the reasons for eliminating these positions? Has eliminating these positions affected the quality of the translation bureau's services? How has eliminating these positions affected the ability of federal institutions to meet their language obligations?

[Donna Achimov]

Thank you for those very important questions.

We took a look at trends around the world, not just across the government. We had already noticed an overall shift in demand government-wide: departments wanted quick turnaround times, 24/7. We examined how other organizations around the world who followed best practices were dealing with that reality. To be frank, I have to tell you that we learned our processes were somewhat outdated and cumbersome. We had failed to automate the process and find a way to handle texts quickly. We were already in the habit of separating texts for translation into chunks. We improved our practices by working closely with our translators to find better ways of processing texts supported by tools and strong skills. And now, thanks to those efforts, we no longer need as many employees.

In the past, we weren't flexible enough. The bureau's biggest challenge revolves around fluctuating translation demand. And not having flexibility built into the system makes it extremely difficult to manage operations. That is true of any organization, whether in the private sector or other levels of government. With the support of our professional translators, as well as freelance experts, coupled with software tools, we have been able to find a balance.

I would also like to make something clear: we didn't eliminate any positions at the translation bureau. We leveraged attrition, in other words, vacancies left by employees who retired or left the bureau, to build a more flexible organization.

In the next few years, we plan to review our processes and practices as they relate to our core business of government.

We're looking very carefully at what we cannot ever outsource: security documents, top secret work, classified work. We need to keep that work internally, and let me assure you, we will ensure that we have the right level of staff to continue that core centre of excellence.

As to some of the other areas, we will be looking to be very creative in the way we work with not only the private sector but also universities and other organizations, all the while to keep to our original commitment, which is always to ensure that the Government of Canada has a supply of quality translations and that we help departments respect the Official Languages Act.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

We still have some time left.

Does anyone else have a question?

Go ahead, Dan.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You mentioned other countries and translation tool models.

Can you give us an example of a country or a model you studied?

[Donna Achimov]

Yes. Thank you.

In 2012, we hired PricewaterhouseCoopers to do a little overview of Canada and elsewhere. Together with the people in that company, we looked at the European Union, the United Nations—

and a host of other organizations such as NATO, as well as very large corporations. As a matter of fact, PricewaterhouseCoopers has quite a large translation bureau because they do a lot of translation work.

What we found was that all of these organizations had a few things going for them that we didn't have. They had flexibility, so they weren't encumbered by permanent large numbers of staff. They had a core team who were experts in what they did. They had the ability to use technology not to replace people, but actually to improve their business processes.

Memory translation is huge in the translation business. It allows you to take a text, to look at it to say we've translated it many times before or portions of it, and it actually builds into that process the terminology, the texts that were translated before, and then it uses the expertise of the translator.

We were missing some of those processes or, to be quite honest, we weren't actually following industry practices in terms of how they were to be used. We studied very closely these best practices and we were able to adopt those within the translation bureau. I have to say, we did that with consultations of our employees and we used the skills of our professional translators and interpreters to improve our productivity and our efficiency.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Can we really compare a bilingual country with countries that are not bilingual? Did you do that comparison with countries whose background is different from Canada's? A corporation is certainly not bilingual, for example.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you, Mr. Vandal.

Mr. Choquette, you have the floor.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for joining us today.

You have all already seen examples in the media of results generated by the translation tool that you are going to install on all the computers. “It's raining cats and dogs”, for example, which becomes “C'est la pluie, les chats et les chiens”. This is clearly a tool that is never going to replace translators.

The crux of this controversy is the concern that the tool, coming as it does from the translation bureau, may give the impression that it is relatively trustworthy and ready to be used. But we can see from using it that such is not at all the case.

We are told that the tool was designed to write short messages, but actually it should be capable of reading more scientific texts, more tailored to the reality of the departments. That is where the controversy lies.

Since this has all got off to a bad start, would it not be better to stop the launch scheduled for April 1 and to review the process? Clearly, a lot of questions are being raised at the moment.

[Donna Achimov]

As I mentioned, each week a million people use Google Translate, Bing and other similar tools. It's a way of life.

My mother often used to call me to say:

“Could you google this for me? Would you help me?”

Now this is a tool that she can use. She talks with her friends in other languages. People are using it every day now, even at work.

We decided that, at the translation bureau, we had an obligation. We are the official languages experts and we very often receive comments and questions from departments seeking to use certain tools better, like machine translation. They want to know how to use them in order to improve their understanding.

For us, it was an obligation. We are responsible for coming up with a way of creating a tool and the goal is not to replace professional translators.

My Treasury Board colleagues began to discuss the official languages champions with you. That is one of the hats I wear too. I am the co-chair of the Council of the Network of Official Languages Champions. Before launching the tool, we decided to bring each champion in each department and each government agency completely on board, to work closely with them and to seize the opportunity to spread awareness.

The launch is also being done using education, awareness and communication. We are very clear in stating the risks and the consequences if people send something out without running it by a professional translator.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Madam.

You mentioned that you consulted the champions, the leaders, but did you study the risk management involved in launching a tool like this? Were there risk management studies in terms of compliance with the Official Languages Act? For example, are people going to be able to continue to work in the language of their choice? When they receive an email, can they be assured that the email will be in good quality language? Were any studies done along those lines?

[Donna Achimov]

We held a lot of consultations and had a lot of discussions with the official languages champions, with the directors general responsible for communication in the federal government, with a number of official language communities, precisely about ways of encouraging people to use the other official language, while still meeting their obligations and being more collegial with their co-workers.

It is also important to point out that each department is now responsible for managing its own affairs, for managing its employees. That is done with education, with awareness, and with a lot of discussion about the risks. There are processes in each department to make sure that all data and all information available to Canadians are of good quality and come from a professional translator.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Ms. Achimov, do you not find that you are continuing to feed the ambiguity surrounding this tool? You say that the tool can be used for courtesy phrases in small communications. But we have just seen that the opposite is true; it is not at all up to the task of providing everyday language.

I showed you one example a little earlier and we could quote a lot of others. Everyone in the university world, even Donald Barabé, the former vice-president, says that the tool should only be used for reading and that, at the moment, it is not good. It is only good internally, with government leaders. So we need to stop the project and reconsider it before going any further.

[Donna Achimov]

We are working closely with the National Research Council Canada. They have world-class experts in the operation of this automatic tool. The real key is the quality of the source text, for which the federal government is responsible.

Forgive me, but expressions found in Urban Dictionary or expressions such as “It's raining cats and dogs” are not part of what we do in the federal government. We have to encourage people to understand the comprehension value of a tool like this. The adult learning principle is based on experience.

It's doing it on your own. It's having that type of practice. Our commitment is to continue to work with the research council, to continue to use professional translators to ensure that the corpus, the robust database, is filled with proper Government of Canada terminology.