Edinburgh Council Cuts Translation Costs by 90% Using AI with City Trax and Amazon Translate

Edinburgh, Scotland's capital city, is famous for its neoclassical buildings and Edinburgh Castle, which has been a military fortress and royal residence. The City of Edinburgh Council provides education, housing, care, waste management, and planning services to over 500,000 residents. More than one in five residents speak English as a second language. Therefore, the council offers translation services to overcome possible language barriers and ensure effective communication.

Pressure was growing on the customer services team, which manages translations for council departments. Population diversity was increasing, requiring greater language support. Plus, increased remote work had led to an expansion in the written correspondence between staff and residents. As a result, demand for translations—which averaged £55 per document expanded by an estimated 40 percent.

After the council highlighted its translation challenges, the local AWS team referenced Swindon Borough Council, which had also looked to reduce translation costs. Swindon Borough Council had worked with City Trax, an AWS Partner, to implement Amazon Translate, an AI-powered translation service that aligns with local government data security guidelines. After adopting the service, the council cut costs by 99.96 percent while gaining fast, high-quality, customizable translations.

The council spoke to Swindon Borough Council and decided to work with City Trax to adopt a similar solution. Laura Christie, citizen engagement and insights manager at the City of Edinburgh Council, remembers, “We knew our translation solution had to meet stringent UK data compliance standards, which is why we chose AWS and City Trax to protect our data.”

The document translation solution runs inside the council’s highly secure AWS environment, with data residing in the UK as per public sector. “We could leverage the security settings in Edinburgh’s AWS infrastructure as well as the cloud’s scalability, reliability, and cost-effectiveness,” says Nigel Matthews, director of business development at City Trax.

City Trax implemented a document translation solution into the council's AWS infrastructure in only 10 days, developing customized workflow processes, reports, and user manuals. City Trax then helped onboard users, conducted online training, and provided ongoing support and maintenance. Raja Shafique, team lead of interpretation and translation service for customer services at the City of Edinburgh Council, says, “In 10 minutes, first-time users had mastered the AWS document translation service. And in a matter of weeks, 16 members of our customer services team were utilizing the technology, empowering them to translate documents into 75 languages within minutes.”

By adopting the service, the council has significantly reduced translation expenditures. Translations now cost £0.07 per document instead of about £55, saving the council around £39,000 in fees within 10 months of going live and delivering a rapid return on investment.   

“With Amazon Translate, our costs for producing documents in multiple languages have fallen by 90 percent,” states Shafique. As a result, the project has delivered one of the most significant efficiency gains ever seen at the council, which, like authorities across the UK, is working hard to deliver greater value to citizens.

Besides saving resources, the AWS solution has cut translation delivery times from one week to 24 hours. Moreover, the time savings haven’t been at the expense of work quality. “Feedback from residents consistently confirms the clarity of our translations,” says Shafique. He adds that human translators are still translating documents relating to legal processes as per the current law in the UK.

Thanks to the document translation solution, council personnel can provide better, more personalized service. The moderate cost and speed of the service have removed concerns about the expense of translations and delays in sending communications. Shafique explains, “Before, people might have stuck to using formal letters accompanied by leaflets or guidance documents. Now that we’ve taken advantage of Amazon Translate, they can communicate more effectively and at much less cost.”

The City of Edinburgh Council provides over 700 services to residents in Scotland’s capital. The budget for the council, which has about 15,000 employees, is £1.5 billion for 2024–2025.

• Amazon Translate

• Adopting Amazon Translate within two weeks
  
• Reducing costs from £55 per document to just £0.07
  
• Cutting translation delivery times from one week to 24 hours
  
• Delivering a better and more personalized service to residents