Art Borups Corners had fun translating their local nuclear consultation, turning community submissions and technical reports into Simplified Mandarin and for readers around the world.
Democratizing Technical Knowledge Through Community-Led Applied AI
What happens when a small Northern Ontario community decides to share its nuclear waste consultation with the world? You get a project that’s equal parts curiosity, tech experiment, and international outreach. And the wild part is, they did it mostly for fun!
Over the past few months, the Art Borups Corners team has been working on its local Impact Assessment work about the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s proposed Deep Geological Repository (DGR) — not into French or Spanish, but into Simplified Mandarin. Why? Because their readers from China have been growing, and they wanted to make sure others could follow along with community stories, technical reports, and environmental data — all in a language they understand.
You can visit the site at: https://melgundrecreation.ca/zh-nuclear
But they didn’t just hit “translate” on Google. Using advanced AI tools, they built a system that keeps the legal, technical, and emotional nuance of the original community submissions intact. That means letters from local residents about cumulative effects or Indigenous rights can now resonate with students, researchers, and curious minds in Beijing, Shanghai, Urumqi, and beyond.
“This was really about fun and experimentation,” says the team. “We wanted to see if a small community could use AI not just to translate words, but to translate experience — our questions, our concerns, our stories — for a global audience.”
The result? A fully mirrored archive of Melgund’s nuclear consultation, accessible to anyone with an internet connection. And while it started as an experiment, it’s also a proof-of-concept: language shouldn’t be a barrier to understanding the environmental impacts of major projects.
Check it out and explore the submissions yourself at https://melgundrecreation.ca/zh-nuclear. The English version is always there too: https://melgundrecreation.ca/nuclear
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