Council slashes translation costs with machine learning

Swindon Council in the UK deployed a machine learning solution which cut content translation costs from £160 (US$203) per document to just 7p and reduced turnaround time from weeks to minutes.

The code for the system has been made available as open source to benefit other local governments.

The initiative came out of a request from the council’s Paediatric Therapy Service. Swindon has a population of 230,000 and around 100 languages are spoken across the borough. In 2021, the Paediatric Therapy Service had around 400 documents translated, costing on average £160 each and taking up to 16 days. This included internal preparation and sending files to an external translation agency.

Swi...