The government’s AI translation tool keeps making mistakes

The Canadian government has an AI-powered translation tool that’s reportedly been riddled with errors for months.

The federal government’s AI-powered translation tool, GCtranslate, has only been around for about six months, but in that time, it’s racked up a concerning number of errors, including some really unfortunate translations.

According to documents CBC/Radio-Canada obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, GCTranslate introduced several mistranslations and hallucinations in government documents, particularly when used for translations from English to French.

Errors range from simpler mistakes, like translating a common abbreviation for the transportation bureau, TB, to Tuberculosis, to more severe errors, like changing someone’s name from “Mike” to “Stephanie.” There were also some other funny translation errors, such as the tool translating “Buy Canadian Policy” into “Achetez une politique canadienne,” which means “Buy a Canadian policy.”

One of the more… unfortunate changes spotted by Radio-Canada was translating a shorthand for “cumulative growth” to “sperme croissance,” which certainly does not mean cumulative growth.

Bad (and funny) translation mistakes might seem innocuous, but they can have an outsized impact on Canadians. Experts warned Radio-Canada that an incorrect translation of a tax form could mean French-speaking Canadians are excluded from a credit or benefit that an English-speaker might get. Similarly, experts warned that poor translations of instruction manuals for weapons or equipment could lead to injuries or worse.

Of course, it’s also worth noting that GCtranslate is a pilot project and is receiving regular updates to improve and fix problems. Further, translators are assessing the quality of translations and helping retrain the models to improve performance.

Source: CBC/Radio-Canada

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