Official Languages Committee on April 11th, 2016

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

The fear is that people are using this tool to communicate with colleagues internally.

[Donald Barabé]

Exactly.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

One of your recommendations was to educate departments on the benefits and limitations of the translation tool. How do you suggest that be done? This is what would happen in a perfect world.

[Donald Barabé]

It's important to explain that machine translation presents advantages in terms of speed. The tool helps to give an idea of a document's content, but it is important to stress that it cannot be used in any communications because it does not respect the principle of official language equality. That is key.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

That's where we hit a snag.

[Donald Barabé]

That's where the issue lies.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Do you think that there will be more translation with this tool, or will it stay the same?

[Donald Barabé]

An enormous amount of translation and communications are done in the world.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Will the machine translation tool help to make gains?

[Donald Barabé]

Clearly, it contributes to gains in productivity.

Let's take the case of weather reports. I don't know how many people are on this team currently, but there were seven translators when I was there. If humans had to do this work without using machine translation, it would have taken about 70 translators. There are enormous savings, but it is an extremely precise area.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

And specific.

[Donald Barabé]

Absolutely. It's mainly because meteorologists are heard describing the day's gloomy weather only one way, and the machine regurgitates that description.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Fergus, you have three minutes.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

I am relieved to hear you say that machine translation should only be used as a tool for understanding, not for translation. Indeed, it would lead to erroneous communications that would not be revised by a professional. I fully agree with you.

My question has to do with one of your slides that says that the "Bureau has to recover its full costs, except for services to Parliament".

You didn't mention in your recommendations whether this model should be reviewed. Should it?

[Donald Barabé]

We recommend correcting the difficulties and unintended consequences.

By coincidence, half of my career was spent in the Translation Bureau when its services were mandatory and free, and the other half when they were optional and not free. You might expect this not to be the case but, strangely, I preferred the second half, because it required being as efficient as possible. However, it has probably gone too far.

The best parallel I can make is with Justice Canada's legal services. The departments have legal issues and turn to lawyers from the Department of Justice to help them. Each department has a legal service that reports to Justice Canada, not the department it is in. Only a portion of the costs are billed by Justice Canada to the departments.

When departments are billed the full costs, including for items for which the departments have no budget, such as rent and insurance, this causes undue pressure on them and results in undesirable actions, such as the creation of full ghost services.

Some independent studies have been done to see what these services cost. It turned out that it may cost up to three times more than the Translation Bureau. We have probably gone a little too far, and these aberrations need to be corrected.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you, Mr. Fergus.

Mr. Choquette, you have the floor.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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

I am really pleased that Mauril Bélanger and I requested this study. Indeed, the deeper we go into the subject, the more we realize the importance of the Translation Bureau in connection with linguistic duality and respect for official languages.

When Ms. Achimov appeared before this committee, she stated, as she did in the media, that the translation tool could be used to draft short emails and non-official messages.

Why do you think she said that?

[Donald Barabé]

Perhaps because of a lack of understanding of the tool and how exactly it can be used.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

I asked her if she was aware that experts had stressed, as you did as well, that it was extremely important never to use this tool for drafting purposes. I asked her if she did not find that this situation had led to confusion, a mess, and whether she thought it would be preferable to postpone introducing this tool. She responded that it wasn't necessary.

Like the associations of translators of New Brunswick and Ontario, I recently sent a letter to Minister Judy Foote to ask that this implementation be postponed. Fortunately, it is for now.

You might have learned in the media why it was postponed. Comments made by the Department of Public Services and Procurement included the following:

Changes aimed at "increasing response speed" and "clarifying information for the user" will have to be made "in the coming weeks", before the machine translation tool is rolled out across the federal public service.

Based on your knowledge of the matter, would you say that this response is satisfactory?

[Donald Barabé]

It's difficult for us to comment on this. However, on the second point you raised, about the need for clarification, I think the fact that we are all here discussing this issue shows that clarification is needed.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Great.

You covered the Translation Bureau and some recommendations you made. You also spoke about what the private sector should not or would not translate.

Could you expand on that?

[Donald Barabé]

Earlier, union representatives spoke at length about using outside contractors. The Translation Bureau Act clearly states that the decision to use contractors lies with the CEO of the Translation Bureau. Simply from a management perspective, it is an absolute necessity because demand fluctuates. Staffing positions to have everything done internally when there are peak periods would be very expensive for taxpayers and would not be efficient. So it is important to use the private sector.

What was the next part of your question?

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

You spoke about what the private sector should not or would not translate.

[Donald Barabé]

The issue is determining what we send to the private sector. We included in our recommendations the fact that the private sector should not be given texts that should not be entrusted to it, such as texts that the government uses to make decisions. That is also the case for all texts with a security classification. In fact, even though a supplier has security clearance, it may end up in a conflict of interest.

Let me give you an example. During my entire career as a public servant, I had "top secret" clearance. Every six months, I had to complete a declaration of interests to show my employer, the Government of Canada, that I was not in a conflict of interest. This is part of the Values and Ethics Code for the Public Sector, which is included in the employment conditions of public servants. However, this may not apply to a supplier. Therefore, texts with a classification should probably not be entrusted to the private sector.

The other point concerns what the private sector would not do. Since I am very active in the association that represents the language industry in Canada, I can tell you that the private sector does not want to translate texts that are not profitable. That's normal. These people want to ensure their profitability. Texts that are very short, scientific or highly specialized are examples of non-profitable texts. It isn't profitable for these people to put together the resources for them.

An analysis may be done by considering these factors.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Lapointe, you have the floor.