Lincolnshire County Council employs Systran software to translate website

Lincolnshire County Council has automated the translation of is local government website from English into nine other languages.

Lincolnshire is a largely agricultural county that has many European workers on its farms and in its factories.

Peter Barton, the council's head of web and information services, said manual translation would have been too slow and expensive.

He said Systran software enabled residents to forget they were viewing an English website because the translation happened dynamically and automatically in the background.

"Translating just 10% of the content would have cost about £100,000 a year and would be have been undynamic and not that helpful," Barton added.

As the council's website content is updated in English, it is translated automatically into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Chinese, Russian and Polish.

The council is now planning to use the Systran software to translate its audio-streaming service to provide content to visually impaired citizens.