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Dear John,

Localities across the United States are taking innovative steps to improve language access for immigrant and refugee communities. Seattle, where one in five residents speaks a language other than English, is one example of a local government that has operationalized more efficient and centralized processes to provide quality translation across city agencies.

A new Practitioner's Corner from MPI's National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy details the experience of the Seattle Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs' (OIRA) Language Access Team, which since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has become the in-house hub that other city departments, including the Office of Economic Development, Parks and Recreation, and the Office of Housing, work through to meet their translation and related needs.

One component of Seattle's language access strategy is the use of computer-assisted translation (CAT). Though not a replacement for the more than 50 professional translators from the local community that the OIRA Language Access Team works with, the CAT tool and its portal create a single system through which agencies can submit translation requests and through which translators can draw on translation memories, term bases, and machine translations to ensure greater efficiency and consistency of language.

"Every locality is different and will have a different vision of how their agencies provide language services," writes Peggy Liao, the Language Access Program and Policy Specialist for the city of Seattle. "From my experience as well as discussions with Language Access Leads in other places, I see a growing trend of local governments strengthening their language access on both strategic and operational levels."

Read her Practitioner's Corner here: www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/language-access-centralizing-translation-cat.

For a recent report on the key features of language access laws and policies across the United States, see: www.migrationpolicy.org/research/state-local-language-access-policies.

And for all of MPI's language access work, visit: www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/language-access-translation-and-interpretation-policies-and-practices.

Best regards,

Margie McHugh
Director,
MPI National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy


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The Migration Policy Institute is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank in Washington, D.C. dedicated to analysis of the movement of people worldwide. MPI provides analysis, development and evaluation of migration and refugee policies at the local, national and international levels. MPI's National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy is a crossroads for elected officials, researchers, state and local agency managers, grassroots leaders, local service providers and others who seek to understand and respond to the challenges and opportunities today's high rates of immigration create in local communities.

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