Multilingual Parliaments powered by AI
Written on September, 2024
This publication is part of the book “Artificial Intelligence in Legislative Services: Principles for Effective Implementation”. To download the entire book, use the button below:
Introduction
While AI has made significant strides across many sectors, some of the most visible and closely observed organisations are taking a more measured approach in adopting this transformative technology. Understandably, their hesitation and scepticism stem from two concerns – maturity of the AI products and putting the adequate guardrails in place to avoid unwanted disruptions in parliamentary operations. Change management and resistance from the existing workforce fearing retrenchment is another issue to contend with.
Challenges Facing Multilingual Parliaments
Parliaments around the world generally fall into three categories: monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual. While multilingual parliaments are fewer in number, the challenges they face are unique and often more complex.
Over time, most parliaments have developed reliable systems to record speeches, debates, and discussions, often relying on highly skilled stenographers, or Hansard staff. Their work is crucial in ensuring the accuracy of parliamentary records. However, as technology continues to advance, new opportunities arise for Hansard offices to enhance their processes, as explored in another chapter in this book.
Key Communication Barriers in Multilingual Parliaments
In parliamentary and committee settings, both live and recorded communications must be easily understood by all members. However, in bilingual and multilingual parliamentary environments, this isn’t always feasible. The Parliament of India, with 22 recognised regional languages, and the European Parliament, which operates in 24 languages, face significant challenges in ensuring smooth communication. In such scenarios, language barriers can sometimes make it difficult, if not impossible, for all members to fully engage and participate in discussions.
The other challenge is, disseminating the information captured by the Hansard staff. First, they need to be reviewed and vetted (which is currently limited by recording processes). Then, depending on the language requirements, the transcript needs to be translated before getting disseminated.
AI-Driven Solutions for Multilingual Parliaments
Addressing the challenges of multilingual parliaments requires embracing advanced technologies that support inclusive and comprehensive digital transformations, while ensuring that the human element remains central to parliamentary processes.
Utilising the self-learning and generative capabilities of AI, a branch of Natural Language Processing is maturing fast in terms of recognising speeches, understanding nuances such as punctuation, sentiment etc. and cutting out occasional profanity before reproducing the communication in the target languages. Platforms with capabilities of recognising speech without prior training have eliminated the awkward hours spent training the model on each user’s voice. The technology also has the ability to do gender recognition and produce the translated output matching the input gender.
Simultaneous Interpretation
Voice recognition hinges on understanding of the phraseology, grammar, tone, and sentiment of a segment of human voice. Advanced algorithms also have to track the speed of delivery that can be a crucial component in syncing translated audio with transcript or close captions, which differs in number of words and sentence lengths from the original language.
Advanced NLP platforms bring together several pieces of the puzzle in trying to reproduce the most accurate, structurally correct, and sentimentally resonating translated voice output while ignoring ambience noises.
One notable example from the private sector is MeetMonk, an AI startup working on the deep-learning NLP algorithms, that have been working with parliaments in this domain.
The image below represents an example of such a platform, with simultaneous interpretation for 85 languages with very high accuracy, low latency, and with human voice output.
Image 1: Voice to Voice Interpretation interface from MeetMonk
Live Stream Translation
The problem is more accentuated when live stream audio/video needs to be translated. Many parliaments broadcast the proceedings through live streaming with significant challenges for multiple languages in real-time mode. The challenge with the live stream translation is to translate audio first and then match it up with the input video frame by frame so that the video looks natural. With advanced audio syncing algorithms, parliaments can ensure the time-sliced video is tagged correctly and then the translated audio is superimposed accurately.
The video is accompanied with live close captions in the target language it is broadcasted. This technology aims to modernise the way parliaments’ TV transmissions happen today.
Document Translation
This is one area that every parliament needs to focus its attention on to increase efficiency. Parliaments currently translate millions of pages into multiple languages through a largely manual process. While this approach is thorough and time-tested, it is resource-intensive and time-consuming.
With the AI models maturing quickly, and OCR (Optical Character Recognition) becoming more accurate, the new emerging trend is to employ AI to read through and translate documents much faster. In the final step, human reviewers vet the translated documents to ensure its accuracy. This is both fast, efficient, and cost effective. Below is an example of document OCR and translation into multiple languages.
Document Translation platforms can translate documents of different sizes into multiple target languages very quickly. The translation is simultaneous, it displays a word count for tracking, and has the ability to download and review all in one place. That makes the process much faster and efficient.
Image 2: Text Interpretation Interface from MeetMonk
Image 3: Text Interpretation Interface from MeetMonk
Overcoming Barriers to AI Implementation in Parliaments
Despite its significant power in making operations smoother in many parliaments, AI still faces challenges in getting widespread implementation. It is because of various human and technical challenges.
AI for multilingual parliaments is a set of tools that can improve based on the feedback it receives. It is evolving fast and is capable of scaling new technological challenges every day. However, there are many technical challenges that are specific to the needs of parliaments. Below is a list of some of the challenges.
Deploying advanced recognition algorithm for languages without need of prior training
Using matured LLM (large language models) for the target languages
Vocalising with human-like voice
Optimising for low latency and high fidelity
Utilising profanity filter
Recognising gender and reproducing corresponding output voice
Diarisation and speaker separation
The platform must be intricately designed to adapt and efficiently support a range of legislative activities, and adequately address the needs of different legislative offices. Meticulous planning is crucial for an implementation that marks a significant step in modernising parliamentary operations, harnessing the power of advanced technology for improved efficiency, transparency, and citizen engagement. It must also be very mindful of keeping humans in the loop, deploying thoughtfully designed guardrails, and ensuring that the gaps in the processes are caught and swiftly corrected. Only then, will it have the means to serve the purpose it promises and set a new benchmark in the use of AI in governance.
Conclusion
The adoption of AI in multilingual parliaments presents a transformative opportunity to overcome long-standing communication barriers, improve operational efficiency, and ensure that all members are able to participate fully in parliamentary processes. By leveraging cutting-edge AI technologies, parliaments can modernise their translation, documentation, and broadcasting systems, making them more inclusive and accessible to diverse linguistic groups.
However, successful implementation requires careful consideration of both human and technical challenges. The importance of maintaining a human element in decision-making, deploying AI solutions thoughtfully, and ensuring thorough vetting processes for translated content are crucial to achieving the desired outcomes. With AI continuing to evolve rapidly, it offers unprecedented potential for innovation in parliamentary functions, provided that the right balance is struck between technology and tradition.
The views expressed in this article are derived from the analysis of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the represented institutions, nor should they be considered and should not be construed as an endorsement or recommendation of any kind. The information presented in this article is derived from multiple sources. We encourage readers to access official sources from the institution in question.
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