Vietnamese has joined Spanish, Chinese and Filipino as an official language of San Francisco. As a result, the city will be required to provide translated materials and services to Vietnamese residents.
The change comes as the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted last week to lower the requirement for determining when a language becomes eligible for translation services. Previously, a language needed to have 10,000 speakers to be translated as an official language. That threshold has been lowered to 6,000 speakers.
“In San Francisco, one in three residents is an immigrant and nearly 43% of our population over the age of 5 speaks a language other than English at home,” Jorge Rivas Jr., executive director of the Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs, wrote in the introduction to the 2024 language access compliance report. “Recognizing our diversity is fundamental to ensuring that public services cater to the needs of all residents.”
With 6,791 limited English proficiency Vietnamese speakers in San Francisco, Vietnamese is the fourth largest language population in the city, according to the San Francisco language diversity data dashboard.
As a result, city websites, board and commission meeting materials, and bills from the tax collector and Public Utilities Commission, among other services, will be translated into Vietnamese.
This change, and other amendments to the San Francisco Language Access Ordinance, is aimed at providing residents with city information in their native languages. San Francisco has called this ordinance “one of the strongest local language laws in the nation.”
The city publishes the language access compliance report every year to assess ordinance compliance, finding that during the 2022-2023 fiscal year, only 4.91% of translated materials were translated in Vietnamese. The percentages of translated materials for official languages were much higher.
The report also noted a decline in bilingual staff citywide, stating that the city should prioritize recruitment and retention.
The city said in its ordinance that it would “make every effort” to remove barriers to participation by increasing bilingual staffing specifically.