Situation

Our law firm client assisted the plaintiff group in a class action relating to the failure of a critical piece of civil infrastructure that seriously harmed people, property, and the environment. We leveraged advanced analytics within the review workspace to identify that many documents contained languages other than English and required translation.

Our client leveraged Sky Discovery’s custom AI translation workflow to translate those documents efficiently and effectively. AI translation is imperfect, but it provides a much more proportionate approach to translating large volumes of documents than manual translation alternatives. The client identified that whilst some elements of the translation were very accurate, others, particularly relating to technical terms specific to the case, were not being translated well, leading to increased manual translation requirements.

Solution

Sky Discovery worked with the client to identify the terms that were proving problematic and causing the largest concern and delay regarding the existing translation workflow. We then developed a glossary of those terms and their accurate and appropriate English translations.

Each time new documents were submitted for translation by the Sky Discovery application, the relevant translation tool was directed to review the current glossary and ensure that if any of the terms appear in the documents requiring translation, they were translated in the way specified in the glossary. The glossary was a document capable of being updated by Sky Discovery or the client. Any updates made at a point in time applied to all future documents translated or applied to past translations when put back through the translation workflow.

Both the original non-translated document and the translated document were linked and available in Relativity. All were capable of being searched and having analytics applied. We also developed the ability to link more than one translated document version to the original. The same workflow prevented the AI model from translating a series of proper nouns allowing them to keep their true meaning in the resulting translation.

Impact

Our work in setting up this advanced translation workflow allowed our client to:

• have greater control over the translation process and output

• increase the accuracy of the AI-powered translation workflow

• reduce the amount of manual work required to overcome previous translation errors

• improve the manner and speed with which translated documents can search and review.