Lincolnshire automates website translation

Lincolnshire County Council is automating the translation of its website into 10 different languages to improve access for its 690,000 citizens, which includes a growing population of migrant workers.

The council, which is the UK's fourth largest, uses its website to provide up-to-date information on local services such as education, benefits, council tax and employment. It wanted to increase access to this information to the many Polish and eastern European migrants who work on its farms and in its factories.

To do this, it has selected SYSTRANLinks for 'fluid navigation' on translated links. Visitors can now click on a small flag icon to access dynamically translated pages as they browse the council's website.

Peter Barton, Lincolnshire's head of web and information services, said the new automated translation capabilities would save the authority time and money, as it regularly updates its web content to cater for 155,000 visits and almost one million page views every month.

He said: "Our website is complex and dynamic; the front page changes at least twice per day. We quickly concluded that while manual translations by a specialist translator or translation agency would be more grammatically perfect, with around 10,000 documents and 10 languages to address, the cost would be astronomic."

As page content is updated in English, it can be immediately translated into nine other languages. Barton added: "Even if we translated just 10 per cent of the content, it would cost us around £100,000 per year, which we simply can't justify."

The SYSTRANLinks service was supplied by UK distributor Omega 1st.

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