Evidence of meeting #7 for Official Languages in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was bureau.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Louise Brunette  Professor, Université du Québec en Outaouais
Emmanuelle Tremblay  National President, Canadian Association of Professional Employees
André Picotte  Vice-President, Canadian Association of Professional Employees
Donald Barabé  Chairman of the Board of Directors , Language Technologies Research Centre
Alan Bernardi  President General Director, Language Technologies Research Centre

4:25 p.m.

Professor, Université du Québec en Outaouais

4:25 p.m.

Conservative

Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC

Has anyone said that they wanted the machine to replace humans?

4:25 p.m.

Professor, Université du Québec en Outaouais

Louise Brunette

No one may have said so, but that is what Ms. Achimov's behaviour suggests.

4:25 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Denis Paradis

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Mr. Généreux.

Thank you very much, Ms. Tremblay and Mr. Picotte. Thank you very much to you as well, Mrs. Brunette.

We will suspend the sitting for a few minutes to allow the second panel to settle in.

Thank you for your presentations once again.

4:25 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Denis Paradis

Please have a seat.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we will resume our study on the Translation Bureau.

Joining us are representatives from the Language Technologies Research Centre: Alan Bernardi, president general director, and Donald Barabé, chairman of the board of directors.

Welcome, gentlemen. You have about 10 minutes for your presentation and we will then move to questions and comments from the members of the committee.

4:25 p.m.

Donald Barabé Chairman of the Board of Directors , Language Technologies Research Centre

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You have a presentation in front of you. I will go through it to review the issue of machine translation and to try to answer the following question: why make an imperfect tool available to all federal public servants? I will also talk about the Bureau’s mandate and its financing model.

Mr. Bernardi and I agreed that I would make the presentation because I spent my entire career—35 years—with the Translation Bureau. I retired from the Translation Bureau just three years ago. My entire career was spent there, from translator to vice-president. I was one of the originators of the machine translation project we’re discussing here. So we thought it might be interesting if I presented this perspective.

Let’s start with machine translation. I will tell you about the global context. Every day, 400 million pages are translated by Google. That means that Google translates the equivalent of the Translation Bureau’s annual output every five seconds. The Bureau translates 1.5 million pages a year; Google translates 400 million pages a day.

The European Union already offers European citizens a machine translation system, including for translating diplomas. Even the German authorities are using machine translation to integrate Syrian refugees, for example, because the Syrians don’t speak German, and the Germans don’t speak Syrian. So machine translation is used for that. Whether we like it or not, machine translation is becoming the lingua franca of the world, the most widespread language.

At the federal level, when Ms. Achimov appeared before you on March 7, she told you that federal public servants had used Google Translate over a million times last year. One of the issues is that by using Google Translate, Government of Canada texts are loaded on the servers of a company subject to the Patriot Act. That isn’t the only issue, but it's one that was considered in the decisions.

You should also know that machine translation has been used in the public service since the early 1970s. All weather reports have been translated by a machine since the early 1970s. Why? Because they are repetitive and the formulations are repetitive. It’s basic. The implementation of social media, where everything moves very quickly, creates a demand for instantaneous translation, like it or not.

I would like to repeat an expression that was just used.

The train has indeed left the station.

In other words, machine translation is used widely around that world and, like it or not, it is used by federal public servants.

As Ms. Brunette said so well, the fact remains that this is something that produces a document that is inferior in quality to the original. If the original is at a certain level, the version produced by machine translation will be much lower. As a result, this tool doesn’t produce a quality text. It helps save time and have an idea of what the text is about. That’s why it’s important to control it.

Four conditions were set to control it. The first condition was not to load any classified texts into the tool. The second condition was that it be for personal use and information. The third condition was that professional revision would be required if it had to be distributed, that is, by a professional translator, not a bilingual clerk. Ms. Brunette just gave a good example of the fourth condition. So that the system isn’t contaminated and an erroneous translation put in the system, these translations must be revised at sufficient intervals and fairly regularly.

That's machine translation.

I will now take off my hat as representative of the Language Technologies Research Centre and move on to the Translation Bureau.

There are three important dates in the Bureau’s history: 1934, 1993 and 1995.

What happened in 1934? The Translation Bureau was created through the enactment of the Translation Bureau Act by the Parliament of Canada. The act states the following.

The bureau shall “act for all departments, boards, agencies and commissions” and “for both Houses of Parliament in all matters relating to the making and revising of translations”.

That was subsection 4(1). Subsection 4(2) says that all departments, boards, agencies and commissions “shall collaborate with the Bureau in carrying into effect this Act and the regulations.”

Therefore, when the Bureau was created, it was an agency that all departments were required to use. Under the legislation and regulations, it was to do all translations requested by the departments and by Parliament.

From 1934 to 1995, it was financed through parliamentary appropriations and, as a result, free for the departments.

In 1993, the Bureau was transferred from the Secretary of State, now known as Canadian Heritage, to the Department of Supply and Services, now Public Services and Procurement Canada. The Bureau’s mandate and financing model remained unchanged, but while it was a crucial component of the country’s social fabric, translation became an administrative service. It’s common knowledge that the general aim is to try to reduce the cost of administrative services as much as possible.

In 1995, it was decided that the Bureau would be made a special operating agency, and the departments would no longer be required to use its services. From then on, the departments could choose to do business with the Translation Bureau or the private sector, but could not have their own translation service. However, the Bureau had to start billing all its costs.

I’d like to come back to linguistic duality. You saw earlier that the Bureau went from Canadian Heritage to Public Services and Supply Canada. The presentation contains an article that made the headlines of La Presse in 2007. The article, titled “La survie du Canada repose sur le bilinguisme”, appeared following the publication of a book called Sorry, I Don’t Speak French by Graham Fraser, who was not yet the Commissioner of Official Languages.

The map on page 10 details linguistic duality in Canada. Using statistics from the last census, it shows that 17.5% of Canada’s population is bilingual and that translation is an essential bridge between cultures and communities. In fact, translation plays a fundamental role in the sense that it guarantees each Canadian the constitutional right to be unilingual. It also guarantees that public servants have the right to work tools and documents in their official language.

Page 11 states that the Bureau became a special operating agency, that the departments are no longer required to use its services and that it must recover all its costs. Page 12 outlines that this has led to some difficulties. The first is that the Bureau must continue to meet the demand, but that the departments are not required to feed it. Even if they decide to use it, they fairly often change their mind during the year.

Full cost recovery means that the Bureau must bill the departments for costs for which they are not appropriated. For example, rents for the departments and insurance for employees are financed centrally. Since the Bureau must assume these costs, it must recuperate them through its clients. These costs are non-negotiable.

At the same time, the rules that are imposed on the Bureau are such that if a department decides to use the services of the private sector and put out a call for tenders, the Bureau does not have the right to submit in response to these tenders.

The departments even have more procurement authorities in translation over the Translation Bureau, which is the designated translation authority. The Bureau’s procurement authorities for translation are $25,000, while those of the departments are $2 million. Unfortunately, this led to unintended consequences, including delayed and cancelled translations, and we saw the re-emergence of something we no longer see: on-demand translation. Some departments indicated that they would no longer have documents translated, unless translation was requested. It isn’t widespread, but it still happens fairly frequently.

Given that the departments don’t all have the money to pay for translation, some of them have decided to create an internal translation service, thinking that it would cost them less. Independent studies have shown that it sometimes cost three times more. That led to consequences for the industry. It’s important to note that the Government of Canada is the largest translation client in Canada and one of the largest in the world. The way it provides work has an impact on the industry’s development. By giving the departments the authority to conclude contracts, federal buying power in translation is fragmented, which contributed to the fragmentation and vulnerability.

In conclusion, machine translation is an imperfect but useful tool. However, it needs to be used properly. The Translation Bureau is a key component of the infrastructure that Canada has established to operate as a bilingual country, but unfortunately it is underused.

I have a few recommendations.

In terms of machine translation, it is important to ensure that the four conditions are applied for a successful implementation of the machine translation software. Departments need to be educated on the benefits and limitations of machine translation and on issues relating to the Official Languages Act.

As for the Translation Bureau, it might be necessary to review the Bureau's location within the federal government. Certainly, the difficulties and unintended consequences need to be corrected and the Bureau’s expertise needs to be used to eliminate duplication of costs and that texts that are written by public servants and that need to be translated is indeed translated by public servants.

The private sector doesn’t want to translate everything. I can assure that it does not want to translate unprofitable texts. So the Translation Bureau must be equipped to translate them. The Bureau’s expertise should also be used to consolidate the federal government’s buying power in translation to promote the development of Canada’s translation industry.

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Denis Paradis

Thank you very much for your presentation, Mr. Barabé.

We will now move on to Mr. Généreux and Ms. Boucher, who must share their allotted time.

4:45 p.m.

Conservative

Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank both witnesses for being here today.

Could you explain what the Language Technologies Research Centre is? To use a popular expression, what do you call that when it's at home?

4:45 p.m.

Chairman of the Board of Directors , Language Technologies Research Centre

Donald Barabé

I'll make a brief comment and then pass things over to my colleague.

It's a centre that was created at the urging of several federal agencies, including the Translation Bureau.

Mr. Bernardi will give you the facts.

4:45 p.m.

Alan Bernardi President General Director, Language Technologies Research Centre

Three organizations created the CRTL: the Translation Bureau, the NRCC and the Université du Québec en Outaouais. We are set up just across the river at UQO. Our role is to do research and develop technology in the language technologies sector.

In 2014, we expanded our scope. For lack of funding, we are now focusing on business intelligence, on large archives of data and on entrepreneurship in the Outaouais region.

4:45 p.m.

Conservative

Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC

Did you work directly or indirectly on creating the software or on its supervision? Were you connected to this tool in one way or another? Did you analyze it? I imagine that you are doing an ongoing analysis of this tool, which was to be introduced on April 1.

4:45 p.m.

President General Director, Language Technologies Research Centre

Alan Bernardi

No. We work in the same building and we have used this software for three years, but we had no contact with the version that was deployed for the government.

I should note that there are two parts, as Ms. Brunette explained. There's the software and there's the corpus or what the software learned. This software translates the language of the public service for the public service. It was trained with official texts from the public service that had already been translated in both languages.

What happens when it's removed from its context? When it is asked to translate emails and it hasn't learned to translate emails, the tool doesn't perform nearly as well because the language is different.

As for meteorology and Environment Canada, translation of weather reports comes from the same software that learned the specific language of weather. So it performs very well because the texts vary very little.

4:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Denis Paradis

Thank you.

Mrs. Boucher, you have three minutes.

4:50 p.m.

Conservative

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

There are a lot of new technologies, but you explained to us a little earlier that this tool is for us. It isn't a tool for writing texts that we can send. It's for the personal use of parliamentarians and public servants.

4:50 p.m.

Chairman of the Board of Directors , Language Technologies Research Centre

Donald Barabé

That's right.

4:50 p.m.

President General Director, Language Technologies Research Centre

Alan Bernardi

To do a translation, the person who sees what is produced by the machine has the know-how required to ensure that the tool performed properly and to make corrections if necessary. That's what Ms. Brunette called post-editing. If used the other way, you have to have the skills to do so.

4:50 p.m.

Conservative

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

It's a little like Google Translate.

4:50 p.m.

President General Director, Language Technologies Research Centre

Alan Bernardi

Exactly, and perhaps that is the issue. Public servants are currently using Google Translate a million times a year. Do we continue to use public tools, with the risks that may involve, or do we create an internal tool that does not have security risks and that, with training, can perform much better because it will know the terminology used in the federal public service?

4:50 p.m.

Conservative

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

How can we use this tool when we want to apply the Official Languages Act? Does this tool perform well enough to protect both official languages? The way it works, is it pretty much anything?

4:50 p.m.

President General Director, Language Technologies Research Centre

Alan Bernardi

The tool has its limitations, which depend on the person using it. If used properly, it protects the official languages to some degree. It helps to translate, to understand someone who is speaking to us in another language. We can use it for the purposes of understanding, but it won't strengthen the legislation; it's only a tool.

4:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Denis Paradis

Mr. Lefebvre, you have the floor for three minutes.

4:50 p.m.

Liberal

Paul Lefebvre Liberal Sudbury, ON

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ultimately, this translation tool could be used for any internal communication. But external communications should go through the Translation Bureau.

4:50 p.m.

Chairman of the Board of Directors , Language Technologies Research Centre

Donald Barabé

More specifically, I would say that this tool should not be used for any communications. We know that where there is a communication, there is distribution.

This is a tool that helps someone who does not know the other language to have an idea of what a document contains.

4:50 p.m.

Liberal

Paul Lefebvre Liberal Sudbury, ON

So it's a basic tool.

4:50 p.m.

Chairman of the Board of Directors , Language Technologies Research Centre

Donald Barabé

It's basic and that's the issue of official languages.