Integrating Multilingual AI for Cost Savings and Operational Efficiency in Government
- Anand Shukla
- Dec 5, 2025
- 3 min read
For years, government departments have known they need to communicate better with citizens. What’s changed now is the scale of the challenge. More people are online, more services have gone digital, and expectations have quietly shifted from basic access to genuine inclusion. A form that is only partially translated or an app that only works in English no longer feels neutral; it feels like it leaves people out.
Multilingual AI, especially in areas such as app translation, is starting to change the way governments operate, not as a futuristic extra, but as a valuable instrument for cutting costs, making public services really accessible, and making work easier.
The Rise of Language as an Operational Priority
India’s public sector handles millions of citizen interactions daily, across regions where linguistic diversity is part of the national DNA. According to a Google–KPMG report, nine out of ten new internet users prefer an Indian language over English. That statistic alone tells you why digital services built in one or two languages struggle to achieve adoption at scale.
Governments now face a simple but essential question: How do we deliver services in languages people actually use, without doubling or tripling our operating budgets? AI-powered multilingual systems are rapidly helping out such industries.
Insight 1: AI Reduces Translation Costs Without Sacrificing Quality
Traditional translation operations in government have traditionally been slow and resource-heavy. Multiple agencies, external vendors, and manual reviews add up quickly.
Departments often delay translation because it feels expensive or operationally messy.
But multilingual AI platforms, including domain-trained tools from players like Devnagri, have changed the economics. They accelerate app translation, website localization, and document conversion with high accuracy and far fewer human hours.
Deloitte once noted that automation provides the “highest impact when applied to high-volume, low-complexity tasks.” Translation fits that description perfectly.
AI doesn’t replace human oversight. It reduces the heavy lifting so human reviewers can focus on nuance rather than raw volume. This alone brings immediate cost savings.
Insight 2: Multilingual AI Cuts Citizen Support Load Significantly
When citizens struggle to understand forms, eligibility rules, notifications, or app instructions, they turn to call centres. And call centres are expensive.
A state government we observed saw its inbound calls dip by almost a third once its service delivery app introduced accurate translations for Marathi, Hindi, and Gujarati. Nothing else changed, no new hiring, no redesign. People simply understood the process on the first try.
When information is clear, service requests resolve themselves.
Multilingual AI helps departments unclog support pipelines by reducing the number of people who need help in the first place.
Insight 3: Language Inclusion Increases Adoption of Public Services
There is a reason the World Economic Forum has consistently written about digital inclusion as a core pillar of national growth. When citizens understand instructions immediately, completion rates increase. When they can navigate an app in their first or most comfortable language, usage increases, and when they feel the government is speaking to them and not at them, trust grows.
App translation through AI enables this at scale.
For example, when a local body in eastern India rolled out multilingual versions of its grievance app, including Odia and Bengali, engagement from rural citizens increased sharply. These weren’t new features. Just new language access.
Language isn’t an ornament. It’s a participation lever.
Insight 4: AI Strengthens Compliance and Reduces Operational Errors
Government work is hard enough. If instructions are unclear, forms aren’t translated correctly, or requirements aren’t understood, mistakes can lead to additional work, delays, and unnecessary escalations.
Multilingual AI helps maintain consistency in ways traditional methods can’t. The probability of a mismatch drops significantly when every language version of an app or form is context-aligned, checked by AI-detection models, and memory-matched to previous content.
Insight 5: Multilingual AI Future-Proofs Government Digital Infrastructure
The shift toward e-governance isn’t slowing. New citizen-facing apps appear every year, including mobility, tax, health, ration, education, and more. Each one brings fresh translation needs.
If governments rely solely on manual translation, the cost curve will keep rising.
AI flips the curve. It allows departments to build language-ready infrastructure so new content, modules, and services can be translated with far lower marginal effort. What used to be a bottleneck becomes a routine operation.
This is the kind of structural efficiency governments rarely get from tech investments.
Conclusion
Governments don’t need more complex technology. They need more transparent communication. Multilingual AI delivers that clarity while quietly reducing costs and improving operational efficiency. Because the strongest public service isn’t just digital, it’s understandable.
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