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AI-Assisted Machine Translation for Parliamentary Translators

Translation & Language Access

What it collects

Operational data
Anonymized data
  • Parliamentary text and documents submitted by translators for machine translation — procedural and legislative content from the House of Commons and Senate, not personal information about individuals.
Run by
National Research Council Canada (NRC)
Where
No fixed location
Kept
Not stated by the Helpful Places.
Shared with
Accountable organization
Your copy
You cannot see the data it holds about you. What you can do

What it is for

Translation & Language Access

This AI system helps House of Commons and Senate translators by automatically producing draft translations that they then review and refine. It was built by the National Research Council Canada in collaboration with the Translation Bureau and is trained on past human translator outputs. The system is used by Government of Canada employees, not by members of the public directly, and users are informed that AI is involved in the translation process.

What it collects and what happens to it

Data taken in

Operational data
Anonymized data
  • Parliamentary text and documents submitted by translators for machine translation — procedural and legislative content from the House of Commons and Senate, not personal information about individuals.

Processing

Language Models
  • Domain-specific neural machine translation models trained on past human translator outputs from the Translation Bureau, specialized for the parliamentary domain.

What it does

Understanding (Semantic AI)
Human decides
  • The system reads parliamentary text and returns machine-translated drafts; human translators review, correct, and finalize all outputs before they are used.
Creating (Generative AI)
Human decides
  • The neural machine translation system generates new translated text in the target language that did not exist before the system ran; all generated drafts are reviewed by qualified human translators before use.

Outputs

Generated content
Anonymized data
  • Draft machine translations of parliamentary texts in the target language (English or French), produced for review and finalization by human translators before official use.

Run by

National Research Council Canada (NRC)
  • The NRC Digital Technologies Research Centre developed and operates this domain-specific neural machine translation system in collaboration with the Translation Bureau for use by parliamentary translators.

Government of Canada AI Register — Parliamentary Machine Translation

Built by

Translation Bureau
  • The Translation Bureau collaborated with NRC on development of the system and its translators are the primary end users of the parliamentary machine translation service.

Government of Canada AI Register — Parliamentary Machine Translation

Kept for

Not stated by the Helpful Places.

Shared with

Not available to me
  • This system is used internally by Government of Canada translators only. Members of the public do not have access to the system or its outputs directly; parliamentary translation outputs are made available through the normal parliamentary publication process.
Available to the accountable organization
  • Translation outputs and system usage are available to NRC and the Translation Bureau as the accountable organizations that develop and operate the system.

Stored

Not stated by the Helpful Places.

How to read the colours

Can it identify you?

Anonymized data
Data about people with the link to who is broken. Stripped of identifiers, blurred, aggregated, or noised so this system can’t reasonably tie a record back to an individual.
Pseudonymous data
Each person’s data is tied to a token (hash, ID, template) that lets this system recognise the same person across events, but the token itself doesn’t reveal a name. Reidentification is possible with extra information.
Identifiable data
The data either contains a direct identifier (name, address, account name, recognisable face or voice, plate number) or carries a token this system uses to look up legal identity during processing.

Who completes the loop?

Human decides
This mode suggests; a person decides what to do next. The AI is always advisory — a human is in the loop on every decision. Example: a triage tool ranks cases for a clinician who chooses which to see first.
Human executes
This mode decides; a person carries out the result. Example: an optimizer plans the day’s trash-collection routes, and drivers run them.
Autonomous
This mode decides and acts on its own. No person reviews each decision or carries out the resulting action.

Definitions from the DTPR standard. Amber is about your data, violet about who decides. The fuller the shape and the deeper the colour, the more identifying the data or the less a person is involved.

What you can do

Ask about this system

Questions go to the Helpful Places, not the vendor.

Your rights

  • Right to Algorithmic TransparencyUsers of this system (Government of Canada translators) are informed that AI is involved in generating draft translations. The system was developed by the National Research Council Canada and information about it is published in the Government of Canada's public AI register.

Risks and safeguards

No risks or safeguards have been published for this system yet.