JES Projects
Digital Translation Improves Access to Justice
Approximately 20% of North Americans have limited English proficiency. However, it’s often beyond the means of governments, courts, and non-profit organizations to provide professional translations of legal help information to meet the needs of their diverse communities.
To increase access to legal help information for non-English speakers, JES conducted a research and evaluation project to examine the effectiveness of digital translation software - in particular, Google Translate. JES compared comprehension levels of professionally and digitally translated legal help resources across three languages and four reading levels.
Study participants read four translated legal help resources, and then responded to a series of questions intended to test their understanding of the material. The source material covered four legal topics that provided variation in reading levels (as measured by Flesch-Kincaid): Grade 5 (Renting), Grade 7 (Representing Yourself in Court), Grade 10 (Family Law) and Grade 12 (Human Rights).
The research found that comprehension levels were almost identical for professionally translated and digitally translated legal help resources. Legal help resources for reading levels at grade 7, 10 and 12 all had respondent mean comprehension scores within 1.3% of each other. Grade 5 had a 6% difference (see table). Overall, the mean comprehension level for professionally translated legal help resources was 53.98%, compared to 52.28% for digitally translated resources. Respondents had less than a 2% difference in comprehension levels.
- JES research confirmed that readers of digitally translated legal help resources were able to understand as much as readers of professionally translated resources
- JES research found that digitally translated resources, while imperfect, provide positive comprehension for the 20% of Limited English Proficiency readers in North America
