Basque Government's EJIE builds high-speed AI translation tool on Red Hat OpenShift
EJIE (Basque Government)· SpainRed Hat OpenShift · Red Hat Enterprise Linux · Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
EJIE, the Basque Government's IT management arm, built the Itzuli neural translator to translate between Spanish, French, English and Basque, replacing an older grammar-rule-based tool that struggled with long texts. Using Red Hat OpenShift to run GPU-backed containers for the neural translation models, with support from Red Hat Consulting and a Technical Account Manager, EJIE launched general and specialist legal/administrative versions of the tool. Usage grew 300% in three years: from about 2 million quarterly translation requests in early 2020 to over 6.7 million per quarter by August 2023, with peaks over 260,000 queries in a single day and over 30,000 daily users; official-service translation requests fell 40% over the same period as citizens used the self-service tool directly.
Overview
EJIE, the Basque Government's IT management arm, built the Itzuli neural translator to translate between Spanish, French, English and Basque, replacing an older grammar-rule-based tool that struggled with long texts. Using Red Hat OpenShift to run GPU-backed containers for the neural translation models, with support from Red Hat Consulting and a Technical Account Manager, EJIE launched general and specialist legal/administrative versions of the tool. Usage grew 300% in three years: from about 2 million quarterly translation requests in early 2020 to over 6.7 million per quarter by August 2023, with peaks over 260,000 queries in a single day and over 30,000 daily users; official-service translation requests fell 40% over the same period as citizens used the self-service tool directly.
The challenge
EJIE's earlier automatic translation tool, developed in 2014, used grammar-rule-based technology; it worked well with short sentences but made mistakes in long texts. EJIE needed a high-quality, automated tool supported by modern AI capabilities to translate Spanish, French and English into Basque and vice versa, and had to build new technical capabilities in GPUs and Kubernetes containers to do so.
The solution
EJIE built the Itzuli neural translator using Red Hat OpenShift to run GPU-backed containers for the neural translation models, aided by the GPU operator that simplified GPU integration in OpenShift, with Red Hat Consulting and a Red Hat Technical Account Manager supporting the project. EJIE launched a general version of the tool for colloquial language plus a more specialized version for legal and administrative tasks.
Reported business value
Usage grew 300% in three years: from about 2 million quarterly translation requests in early 2020 (with peaks of 90,000 in a single day) to over 6.7 million per quarter by August 2023 (peaking at over 260,000 queries in a single day). Over 30,000 people now use the translator daily, and over 60,000 people have installed the app on a mobile device. Official-service translation requests fell 40% over the same period as citizens used the self-service tool directly.
Sources
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