The federal government is now turning to AI to help handle translation work across the federal public service, after testing the tech out in seven departments first.
Minister of Government Transformation Joël Lightbound announced the expansion of GCtranslate on Thursday, a secure AI-powered translation tool built to help federal employees work faster in both English and French. The tool handles routine translation work, freeing up the Translation Bureau’s professional translators to focus on the more complex jobs that still need a human touch.
“Government must keep pace with the technologies transforming how people work and communicate,” Lightbound said. “With GCtranslate, we are taking another important step toward a more modern and digitally enabled public service.”
“Canada’s official languages are at the heart of our national identity,” Miller said. “By investing in tools like this, we are strengthening the capacity of the public service, supporting our commitment to our two official languages, and ensuring Canadians continue to receive high-quality services in the language of their choice,” said Marc Miller, Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture.
GCtranslate first launched back in spring 2025, and since then it’s translated more than 300 million words, which works out to around 800,000 pages of documents. Ottawa started rolling the tool out more broadly this April, with plans to keep expanding it across departments until March 2027.
The tool was trained using the Translation Bureau’s bilingual text database, and translators still check its work for quality. It’ll get retrained over time with fresh, professionally curated data to keep its vocabulary current.
GCtranslate is the first project to launch under the government’s AI Strategy for the Federal Public Service, which runs from 2025 to 2027. Down the line, the Translation Bureau is also looking at whether AI could help with Indigenous language translation, plus interpretation and voice recognition work. We don’t know the exact cost of GCtranslate (but whatever happened to using Google Translate?), and hopefully it didn’t cost $54 million like the ArriveCan app.
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If you are wondering why they don’t use Google Translate, maybe remember all the posts about keeping Canadian data, in Canada.