Government of Nunavut promotes Indigenous languages with groundbreaking Microsoft machine translation

Strengthening Inuit languages in the face of change

At more than 808,000 square miles, the territory of Nunavut is almost the size of Saudi Arabia, with about one-thousandth the population. Of that sparse population of 36,858 Canadians, 85 percent are Inuit. Indigenous to the Arctic, Nunavut Inuit share a common ancestry with the roughly 115,000 Inuit spread out across the circumpolar North, in other Canadian territories, Alaska, Greenland, and Siberia. Thanks to the resourcefulness, skills, and technology developed over millennia, Inuit have thrived, developing a complex language shaped by an intimate relationship with one of the most remote and harshest landscapes on the planet. This ingenuity has helped Inuit adapt to the changes and challenges brought about by European settlers in the Arctic.

Many of these changes pose a threat to Inuit culture and the languages that support it. It only takes a generation or two of reduced usage to threaten a language’s survival. The legacy of assimilative educational policies in the Arctic means that many Inuit are now growing up without a solid background in Inuktut, a family of Inuit languages that includes the two predominant Indigenous languages of the territory. Inuktitut and its various dialects are spoken across the territory, with Inuinnaqtun used in parts of the Kitikmeot Region, and in neighboring Inuit lands that hold many of the important cultural signposts that keep their traditions alive.

Visionary Nunavut community members and officials, who have swum against this rising tide for several years, recently reached for the latest technology as a way to encourage the popular usage of Inuktut. They approached Microsoft with their hopes and aspirations—and learned about the multilingual machine translation service known as Microsoft Translator, part of Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services. A multidisciplinary team collaborated with Microsoft to add both the Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun languages to Microsoft Translator, available as a mobile app or an online service.

Imagining a world where everyone’s language is understood

Kristen McCallum is a typical high school student—busy with her soccer team, school, friends, and family. The bubbly 17-year-old lives in Cambridge Bay in Nunavut’s Kitikmeot Region and grew up speaking English. But as an Inuk youth, McCallum wants to communicate with her grandmother in their own language. She acutely feels the lack of early experience as she’s worked to learn Inuinnaqtun. McCallum feels that loss of connection when she wants to converse with Elders at the grocery store and with people her age from other Nunavut regions. “At sports tournaments, I always felt left out because I couldn’t converse fluently,” she says. “I really want our language and culture to continue with the next generation, so I’m thrilled to see my kindergarten-aged sister learning the language and using it in her daily life.” 

Inuit Elder Noah Kudlak, a professional carver and youth mentor, grew up speaking Inuktitut. “I’m working to pass Inuktitut on to our youth, so that they can maintain strong ties with their community, our Elders, and our leaders,” he says. “I teach them about respect for the land, their Elders, and where we’ve come from—the important stuff.” He sees the potential for English and French speakers to learn about his people through language. “Using Microsoft Translator can go a long way to put people of different cultures in touch with each other,” says Kudlak. “I think that by having better understanding between English and French speakers and Inuit in Nunavut, we become a better community.”

That resonates with James Howard, a Student Counsellor at Nunavut Arctic College. A native English speaker, Howard worked hard to learn to speak Inuktitut as well as his young children do. They’re also proficient in Inuinnaqtun. He wonders how much faster his progress could have been with a technology like Microsoft Translator. “I’m seeing a resurgence of our languages,” he says. “Inuit love to have visitors try to speak in Inuktitut or Inuinnaqtun. It shows a respect for the languages and culture. With applications like Tusaalanga and Microsoft Translator, people are learning the words they need to connect and spread the language.”

That’s why officials like The Honourable David Joanasie, Minister of Community and Government Services at the Government of Nunavut (GN), make a point of speaking Inuktitut at public functions. “It goes a long way when I use Inuktitut in public,” he says. “People sometimes praise me, but I think it should be normal that we serve the people in their language.”

Responding to everyday realities in a multilingual territory

Stéphane Cloutier brought a passion for preserving the Inuktut family of languages to his position as Director of Official Languages at the Government of Nunavut. Now retired, he continues his support for the program he began in 2008, which enables legislation guaranteeing protection of the Inuktut family of languages throughout Nunavut—from government offices and the workplace to schools and programs for young children. But Cloutier is adamant that preserving a language takes more than political will. “We need tools to help employees perform their duties in the language we want to protect,” he explains. “Using information technology like spell checkers for Inuktitut and language-learning apps is an important resource for supporting that goal.”

The Honourable Joanna Quassa, Minister of Culture and Heritage at the Government of Nunavut, discussed the importance of preserving endangered languages. “We need to practice a language to keep it alive,” she insists. “I feel that this tool will help to promote our language. It’s quite important that the younger generation continues with the Inuktitut language so that they can have more connection and be able to have conversations and hear stories from their Elders.”

She adds that although the Government of Nunavut employs translators to render English-language documents in Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun, that small and hardworking group needs more tools. The limited pool is hindered somewhat by the setbacks that Indigenous languages have suffered from, resulting in inconsistencies. In the past century, non-Inuit officials and other external parties have taken splintered approaches to creating written Inuktitut, and the differences even in a single dialect spoken by isolated communities have created further inconsistencies. In the absence of standard dictionaries and a single definitive guide for the languages, confusion on how exactly a given phrase should be translated adds to the time and difficulty to keep government media updated. Furthermore, the waiting list for translation services is long—it takes about two months for a team of up to five translators to translate a 300-page document.

Translators, a scarce resource, can’t be everywhere, either. While the health system employs them, capacity issues mean that they can’t always be available to help a unilingual Elder communicate with hospital staff who don’t speak the same language. But an app like Microsoft Translator can be summoned, genie-like, to a mobile device screen.

Bringing a passionate team together

The Government of Nunavut’s IT group had developed a language translation service online, but without extensive updating, it couldn’t work with the modernized IT ecosystem that GN deployed in 2020. Dean Wells, Corporate Chief Information Officer at the Government of Nunavut, reached out for help from his Microsoft Customer Success Account Manager (CSAM), Marc-André Groulx. A trusted advisor, Groulx introduced him to the AI-enabled Microsoft Translator service. Wells and his team welcomed the idea of supporting the community with groundbreaking technology. “You don’t get many opportunities to preserve a language,” says Wells. “This project has profound implications for students and their teachers, medical treatment for unilingual patients, and the community as a whole.” 

A diverse team carried out the project. Wells’s group worked on the infrastructure, bandwidth, and project management. Karri Gillis, Senior Business Analyst at the Government of Nunavut, served as the technology lead, coordinating between the IT team and government ministers and other executives. She partnered with Michèle Guignard, Consultant with the GN Department of Culture and Heritage, who managed the technology stack for language translation, working on adding vocabulary and refining translations.

As a first phase, the team worked with Microsoft to add the Inuktitut language to Microsoft Translator, adding Inuinnaqtun during the second phase. Because the GN translators contributing to the project focus on government documents, the current version of Microsoft Translator for Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun is more suited to the more formal language of official documents and reports. “But we’re bringing other voices into Microsoft Translator to support everyday conversation,” says Gillis. “Children’s books will be an important piece, as will Elder communications and medical conversations. Adding speech-to-text capabilities for Inuktut will take ease of use to the next level.” She looks forward to a future version that could connect mobile photo apps to Microsoft Translator so that people can use it to quickly translate text on a sign.

Building a language bridge between people 

The work to date has been demanding, but the team’s appetite to continue only grows. Like her IT teammates, Guignard is enthusiastic about the impacts of their work. “This project with Microsoft Translator opens translation access to a much wider group of people,” she says. “The exchange works both ways, making the outside world more accessible to unilingual Inuit and bringing Inuktut languages to others. It’s a bridge between two very different cultures.”

Minister Joanasie emphasizes ease. “Our language is part of us. It needs to be as easy as breathing,” he says. “I often think of the dialectical differences that make it harder for people to interact. I try to be mindful of these and enrich my vocabulary to strengthen my language skills. Using Microsoft Translator can help all of us master the languages, whether we’re native speakers or not. That’s my hope for our territory.”

Daniel Cuerrier, who became Director of the Translation Bureau after Cloutier retired, is keen to carry the work forward. “We’re looking forward to continuing to feed language examples to the Microsoft Translator tool to increase its accuracy,” he says.

Cloutier looks back at the project he and Wells worked on with such intensity. “I was skeptical at first that an AI-powered app could effectively translate a language as complex as Inuktitut,” he recalls. “But the results are clear—it works. A translation tool can’t replace using language transmission among humans, but it can support language revitalization. We’ve contributed to a tool that can help protect the right of most Government of Nunavut employees to work in their preferred language of Inuktitut and help preserve our Indigenous languages. That’s exciting.”

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