Is Google Translate enough?
The Researchers
David Orrego-CarmonaLink opens in a new window, in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, led this British Academy-funded project, working with Susana Valdez (Leiden) and Priyanki Ghosh, alongside local authorities, charities, and third-sector organisations across the West Midlands.
The Challenge
Free machine translation tools like Google Translate are increasingly used by public organisations to communicate with multilingual communities, often without any assessment of whether they are fit for use or purpose. For services supporting vulnerable populations, from council communications to charity outreach, a mistranslation could mean someone missing vital information, losing access to services, or being misunderstood at a critical moment.
Our Approach
Working directly with councils, charities, and NGOs in the West Midlands, the project examined how MT and AI tools were actually being used in public service settings, and developed practical guidance to help organisations use them more effectively and responsibly, rather than assuming any tool was "good enough" by default. Translation offers a revealing lens for this work: it is often held up as one of AI's clearest success stories leading to barrier-free communication, yet looking closely at how it is actually used in practice exposes a more complicated picture, including who benefits from automation, whose labour and judgement it displaces, and who is left to bear the risk when it falls short. This made the project a useful starting point for asking broader questions about the societal impact of AI and automation beyond translation itself.
Our Impact
Findings from the project were submitted as written evidence to the House of Commons Public Services Committee's inquiry on interpreting and translation services in the courts, directly informing parliamentary scrutiny of language service provision in the public sector. The project also laid the foundation for a broader strand of work on AI translation, trust, and governance, with follow-up funding applications exploring potential collaborations with a wider range of external stakeholders, including healthcare providers, local government, and voluntary and community sector organisations.
