Artificial Intelligence
Beyond Translation: Human-Centered Language Access with AI
Led by: Ruthie Nachmany & Barbara Niveyro
How can public agencies ensure that AI-powered translations meet the real needs of the communities they serve? This workshop explores how a human-centered approach—grounded in plain language, bilingual co-creation, and machine translation supervision—can transform language access in government services.
Participants will learn from a real-world case study: how the New Jersey Office of Innovation collaborated with Spanish-speaking residents and frontline staff to redesign the Unemployment Insurance intake process, resulting in dramatic improvements in access, completion rates, and public trust.
This session will offer public sector professionals tools and frameworks for incorporating AI and machine translation (MT) into their digital services—without losing sight of cultural nuance, accessibility, or equity.
This session is ideal for public servants in content design, digital services, equity and inclusion, user research, translation/localization, and IT. No technical background in AI is required.
- Explain the difference between AI and machine translation and identify when and how to use each in service of language access
- Apply a 6-step framework for human-centered machine translation that includes plain language writing, bilingual review, and effective use of open MT tools
- Evaluate MT tools using key criteria such as integration capabilities, glossary support, and translation quality indexes
- Identify common technical and linguistic challenges in digital translation workflows and develop strategies to address them
- Promote inclusive and participatory practices by involving bilingual community members and frontline staff throughout the content creation process
This workshop is part of an InnovateUS Series called : Artificial Intelligence
Click here to view all workshops from this series
Barbara Niveyro
Bilingual Content Design Lead, Office of Innovation for the State of New Jersey
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