LINCOLNSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL GETS MULTI-LINGUAL
Lincolnshire, situated on=20 the East Coast of England is the UK=92s fourth largest county. It = stretches from=20 the River Humber to the Wash, and like an increasing number of = local=20 authorities has a growing population of immigrant workers. = Lincolnshire=92s web=20 site plays a vital role in communicating with its 690,000 citizens, and = as Peter=20 Barton, Head of Web and Information Services at the County Council = explains,=20 automating web page translation with SYSTRAN is an easy and cost = effective way=20 of providing access to local information for all.
Lincolnshire, which covers almost 6,000 square = kilometres, is=20 largely a farming county and services a rich diversity of nationalities. = It has=20 many Polish and eastern European workers on its farms and in its = factories. In=20 towns such as Boston for example, around 15% of the population is = Portuguese.=20 Short of staffing a multi-lingual call centre, providing important = day-to-day=20 information about local services such as education, benefits, council = tax and=20 employment was going to prove a challenge. So, the Authority looked into = the=20 possibility of translating the content of its web pages.
Barton=92s project team began by defining which = areas of the=20 site =96 www.lincolnshire.gov.uk = =96 the=20 translations might apply to, which wasn=92t that straight-forward. He = explains,=20 =93In short, which pages should be given priority? Are the most used = pages=20 necessarily the right ones, and why are they the most used? If the web = pages=20 were presented in different languages so that more non-British visitors = could=20 better understand the content, would more of them use different parts of = the web=20 site? How many sub divisions are required? Our web site is complex = and=20 dynamic =96 the front page changes at least twice per day. We quickly = concluded=20 that whilst manual translations by a specialist translator or = translation agency=20 would be more grammatically perfect, with around 10,000 documents and 10 = languages to address, the cost would be astronomic. Employing such an = un-dynamic=20 process would also be unhelpful. Even if we translated just 10% of the = content,=20 it would cost us around =A3100,000 per year which we simply can=92t = justify.=94
The alternative was to embrace technology to =
automate the=20
translation. Barton sought a recommended solution, and set about finding =
out who=20
powered the translation tools for some of the major search engines at =
the time,=20
which led him to SYSTRAN. He then evaluated it against a rival =
product,=20
Babelfish. SYSTRAN was quickly selected based on price, its ease of =
installation=20
and =91fluid navigation=92 on translated links that offers a unique =
browsing=20
experience for the foreign visitor. Citizens can now simply click on a =
small=20
flag and then forget that they are facing an English web site, as the=20
translation operates in the background while they browse from page to =
page.=20
Barton chose
SYSTRAN is the market leading = language=20 translation software for the desktop, enterprise and internet that helps = individuals, small and mid-sized businesses, and large enterprises = instantly=20 translate and understand multilingual information and communicate more=20 effectively in multiple languages. The SYSTRANLinks online service = instantly=20 converts the English version of the web site into multiple languages. = The=20 technology offers a broad linguistic coverage with the support of more = than 52=20 language pairs.
The web content translation at Lincolnshire County = Council is=20 now fully automated. In practice, as the page content is updated by = Barton=92s=20 team in English, it is automatically translated into nine other = languages with=20 =91no fuss=92, and made live. Pages are available in English, French, = German,=20 Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Chinese, Russian and Polish.
Barton concludes, =93Just a few thousand pounds per = year to=20 fully address our translation needs and provide a multi-lingual = communication is=20 amazing value. To date the quality of output has been good. We were = never naive=20 enough to believe that our pages would be as fluent or literal as a = manual=20 translation, but if visitors understand enough of the web content to get = a=20 flavour of its meaning, then there can be no argument for not using it. = Using=20 SYSTRAN, we=92re in a position to make the content of the entire site = available to=20 citizens for whom English is a second language. The alternative would be = that=20 they only had access to limited pages of information. In three years, = I=92ve known=20 just a handful of negative comments about the quality of the = international pages=20 =96 most of which were from individuals trying to sell their translation = services!=94
According to Barton, 85% of the web site=92s users = come from UK=20 URL locations, which indicates that the web team is reaching its target=20 audiences correctly. The site is an impressive operation with over = 140,000=20 visitors, 155,000 page visits and almost one million page views every = month.=20 And, that=92s not the Authority=92s only claim to fame. It was also the = first=20 organisation in the UK to offer a =91read out=92 service that delivers = web content=20 by audio stream in not only a local language, but a local accent too. = The=20 SYSTRAN system at Lincolnshire is partnered with a Swedish product = called Read=20 Speaker that =91speaks=92 the web content in Kurdish, Romanian, Turkish, = Albanian,=20 French, Lithuanian, Czech, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic and = Chinese. With=20 this combined solution, foreign audiences can translate and listen to = the=20 translation from any content published on the web site. =93We offer the = best use=20 of innovative technologies to make our information very accessible to = citizens,=94=20 concludes Barton.