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Civic TranslationSan Francisco

Reference

California language-access obligations.

A plain summary of the four frameworks that most often govern translation for a California public agency, what a vital document usually means, and what a certificate of accuracy is for.

Please read first

This page is general information about publicly available law. It is not legal advice, it does not create a professional relationship, and it is not a determination about any particular agency, program, or document.

Obligations differ by jurisdiction, by funding source, and by program. Each agency should confirm its own duties with its counsel or its funding agency. We translate the documents an agency identifies; we do not decide which documents that is.

The frameworks

Four rules, three levels of government.

Most California agencies are covered by more than one of these at the same time, and the strictest one governs the document in front of you.

Local

San Francisco Administrative Code, ch. 91

Language Access Ordinance.

San Francisco's Language Access Ordinance applies to City and County departments. It requires covered departments to make services and written materials available in the City's threshold languages — the languages spoken by enough limited-English-proficient residents to cross a defined count.

The threshold fell to 6,000 limited-English-proficient speakers effective January 2026. That change added Vietnamese to the required set, alongside Spanish, Chinese, and Filipino.

In practice the ordinance reaches further than document translation: departments prepare language-access plans, report on their compliance, post notice that language assistance is available, and answer written communications from the public in the language in which they were written. Written translation is the part of that work a vendor performs.

State

Gov. Code §7290 et seq.

Dymally-Alatorre Bilingual Services Act.

Dymally-Alatorre applies to state agencies that serve the public. Where a substantial number of the people an agency serves do not speak English, the agency is expected to employ enough qualified bilingual staff in public-contact positions and to translate the materials that explain its services.

The act is administered through reporting rather than complaint alone: agencies survey the language needs of the people they serve and report on a biennial cycle, which is what surfaces gaps in coverage.

The practical output is a set of translated public-facing documents — applications, notices, and the explanatory material a member of the public needs in order to use a program at all.

Federal

Title VI, Civil Rights Act of 1964 · Executive Order 13166

Meaningful access for recipients of federal funds.

Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance. Failing to give people with limited English proficiency meaningful access to a program has long been treated as a form of national-origin discrimination.

Executive Order 13166 directs federal agencies to improve access to their own federally conducted programs and to issue guidance to the recipients they fund. A California agency that takes federal money — transit, housing, health, social services, transportation, emergency management — generally falls within that guidance through its funding agency.

Federal guidance describes the scope of the obligation as a balancing exercise rather than a fixed list: the number or proportion of limited-English-proficient people served, the frequency of contact with the program, the importance of the service being provided, and the resources available. What that produces for one agency will not match what it produces for another.

Federal · health

§1557 of the Affordable Care Act

Covered health programs and activities.

Section 1557 applies to health programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance. Covered entities take reasonable steps to provide meaningful access to individuals with limited English proficiency, using qualified interpreters for spoken language and qualified translators for written material.

Machine translation is addressed directly. Where it is used, machine output alone is generally not sufficient: a qualified human translator is expected to review the result when the content is critical to a person's rights, benefits, or access to care, or when the source is complex, technical, or not literal.

That expectation is the reason a covered program treats human review as part of the deliverable rather than an optional add-on — and the reason a written record of who reviewed a translation is worth keeping.

Definition

Vital documents.

The term is not defined identically everywhere. In federal guidance and in ordinary agency practice it means a document containing information that is critical for obtaining a service or benefit, or one that is required by law.

Applications and enrollment forms
The document a person has to complete to obtain the service at all.
Consent and authorization forms
Anything signed to permit, waive, or release something.
Notices of eligibility, denial, reduction, or termination
Any notice that changes what a person receives.
Notices of rights and of free language assistance
Including the notice that translation and interpretation are available at no cost.
Complaint, grievance, and appeal forms
The route by which a decision is contested.
Letters and notices that require a response by a date
Hearing notices, deadlines, and requests for documents.
Anything a program's own rules name
Some funding streams and program regulations list required documents outright.

Outreach material, newsletters, and general information are usually weighed differently from vital documents, and several of the frameworks treat them separately. Whether a specific document in your program is vital is a determination the agency makes. We translate what you identify.

Definition

The certificate of accuracy.

A signed, dated statement that the translation is a true and complete rendering of the source, and that the person signing is competent to say so.

It is not a government license and it is not a notarization. It is a record, and its value is what it lets an agency demonstrate later: which source document was translated, into which language, on what date, and which party stands behind the text.

That matters when a translated notice is challenged at a hearing, when an auditor asks how a published translation was produced, or when a program has to show that a document was prepared through a defined process with human review rather than pasted out of a tool.

A certificate covers one source document and one language pair. A notice issued in three languages carries three certificates. Translations you already hold can be reviewed against the source by a qualified linguist and, where warranted, certified then — which is usually faster than re-translating.

Specimen

Civic Translation Co.

San Francisco, CA

Certificate of Accuracy

I certify that the attached translation of the document identified below, from English into Spanish, is a true, complete, and accurate rendering of the source document to the best of my knowledge and ability.

I further certify that the translation was reviewed by a linguist qualified to translate between these languages, and that I am competent to make this attestation.

Document
Notice of Public Hearing
Pages
3
Reference
CT-0000-00
Date
00 Month 0000

Signature, authorized representative

Specimen of the certificate of accuracy issued with every completed translation.

Questions

Common questions.

No framework requires a certificate on every document. A certificate of accuracy is a record: it identifies the source document, the language pair, the date, and the party attesting to the translation. Agencies commonly require one for material that enters a case file, a hearing record, a contract file, or a published notice. We issue one with every delivery, so the question does not have to be settled before the job starts.

It depends on the framework and on what the document does. Under §1557 of the Affordable Care Act, machine output alone is generally not sufficient, and a qualified human translator is expected to review content that affects rights, benefits, or access to care. San Francisco's own guidance on generative AI treats the translation of public-facing content as an elevated-risk use and expects human review before anything is published. Independent review of a translation you already hold, including machine output, is a service we provide with a written finding.

A language spoken by enough limited-English-proficient residents in a jurisdiction to trigger a translation obligation there. The count that triggers it is set by the jurisdiction, so a threshold language in one city is not automatically one in the next. In San Francisco the threshold fell to 6,000 limited-English-proficient speakers effective January 2026, which added Vietnamese alongside Spanish, Chinese, and Filipino.

The agency does. It is a legal and programmatic determination rather than a translation one, and it is normally made with counsel or with the program's funding agency. We do not make that determination and we do not advise on it. Tell us which documents you have identified and we will quote and produce them.

Notarization attests to the identity of the person signing a document. It says nothing about whether a translation is accurate. The certificate of accuracy is the substantive record; notarization can be added to it when a particular process asks for it.

Yes. Language access covers spoken interpretation and written translation, and most of these frameworks address both. We produce written translation only. Interpretation is a separate discipline with separate credentials, and we do not provide it.

Related

Send the documents you have identified.

We translate what your agency determines it needs. Attach the file, name the languages, and give us the date, and a written quote comes back same business day.

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