The Hybrid Translation Approach: Scaling Bilingual Content

Bilingual content production has a scaling problem. Traditional approaches don't work:

• ■Human-only: High quality, impossibly slow, doesn't scale
• ■Machine-only: Fast, cheap, often wrong, lacks nuance

We needed a third way.

The hybrid approach:

1. ■AI generates: Professional French translations for all bilingual fields
2. ■Human reviews: Expert review flags corrections
3. ■AI updates: Only fields requiring refinement get touched
4. ■Human approves: Final quality gate

The result: 10x faster than field-by-field translation, with quality control intact.

Why it works:

• ■Leverage AI strengths: Pattern matching, consistency, speed
• ■Preserve human judgment: Nuance, context, cultural fit
• ■Focus human effort: Review is faster than creation
• ■Maintain quality: Expert oversight at every stage

The CI team produces:

• ■10-episode video series (20 videos EN/FR)
• ■Training campaigns reaching 1,000+ viewers
• ■SharePoint ecosystems with complete bilingual parity
• ■Documentation, guidelines, communications

All bilingual. All at pace.

The key insight: AI doesn't replace translators—it changes what translators do. From creation to curation. From typing to thinking.

This isn't about cost savings (though that's real). It's about making bilingual-first feasible. In a federal context, language parity isn't optional. The hybrid approach makes it sustainable.

The workflow is now standard for the team. Every project starts bilingual. Every deliverable maintains parity. The infrastructure makes it possible.