City of Edinburgh Council cuts translation costs by 90% using Amazon Translate with AWS Partner City Trax
City of Edinburgh Council· United KingdomAmazon TranslateThe City of Edinburgh Council, which provides services to over 500,000 residents including more than one in five who speak English as a second language, worked with AWS Partner City Trax to deploy an AI-powered document translation solution using Amazon Translate inside the council's secure AWS environment, with data residing in the UK to meet public sector data compliance standards. City Trax implemented the solution in 10 days, and within weeks 16 members of the customer services team were using it to translate documents into 75 languages within minutes. The council reduced translation costs from as much as £55 per document to £0.07, saving around £39,000 in fees within 10 months of going live, and cut translation delivery times from one week to 24 hours. Human translators still handle documents relating to legal processes as required by UK law.
Overview
The City of Edinburgh Council, which provides services to over 500,000 residents including more than one in five who speak English as a second language, worked with AWS Partner City Trax to deploy an AI-powered document translation solution using Amazon Translate inside the council's secure AWS environment, with data residing in the UK to meet public sector data compliance standards. City Trax implemented the solution in 10 days, and within weeks 16 members of the customer services team were using it to translate documents into 75 languages within minutes. The council reduced translation costs from as much as £55 per document to £0.07, saving around £39,000 in fees within 10 months of going live, and cut translation delivery times from one week to 24 hours. Human translators still handle documents relating to legal processes as required by UK law.
The challenge
Pressure was growing on the City of Edinburgh Council's customer services team, which manages translations for council departments, as population diversity increased and remote work expanded written correspondence between staff and residents — demand for translations, which averaged £55 per document, expanded by an estimated 40 percent.
The solution
The City of Edinburgh Council worked with AWS Partner City Trax to deploy Amazon Translate, an AI-powered translation service, inside the council's secure AWS environment with data residing in the UK to meet public sector data compliance standards. City Trax implemented the document translation solution in 10 days, developing customized workflow processes, reports and user manuals, then onboarded users with online training and ongoing support. Within weeks, 16 members of the customer services team were using the technology to translate documents into 75 languages within minutes. Human translators still handle documents relating to legal processes as required by UK law.
Reported business value
The council reduced translation costs from as much as £55 per document to £0.07, a 90 percent reduction, saving around £39,000 in fees within 10 months of going live, and cut translation delivery times from one week to 24 hours.
Sources
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