Cutting edge EU translation technology now available to Maltese civil servants

Maltese civil servants now have the opportunity of using eTranslation, a cutting-edge machine translation tool developed and used by the European Commission (EC).

The Commission, which has one of the largest translation services worldwide, including a Maltese department, developed this tool to enable its translators, who translate millions of pages a year, to work more efficiently. This new system uses neural artificial intelligence, and yields much better results than the previous one, which was based on statistical models.

“Thanks to its excellent results, eTranslation has proven to be an invaluable addition to our translators’ toolbox. Even though high-quality translation at our level requires skilled professionals, this tool could be of great use for anyone wishing to get the gist of a text in a language they do not speak, or to create a draft translation of a language they do speak,” said Helga Zahra, the head of the Maltese language department in the EC’s Directorate-General for Translation.

e-Translation is now available free of charge to all public administration workers, who can access the service by sending an email to help@cefat-tools-services.eu (link sends e-mail) with an official request from their management. This service is available to everyone with a gov.mt email address, as well as similar addresses related to ministries, departments and other governmental entities in Malta.

Anyone wishing to learn more about eTranslation can read the special dossier on l-aċċent, the Maltese language department’s publication. All issues of l-aċċent, including the latest one, are available on https://is.gd/accentmt (link is external), and those interested in subscribing to the physical issue of the magazine can send an email to l-accent@ec.europa.eu (link sends e-mail).