The City of Philadelphia's push to embrace its linguistic diversity has reached a new milestone with the successful overhaul of Phila.gov's translation services. The Operations Transformation Fund (OTF), initiated in 2021, bankrolled the Translation Services Project helmed by the Office of Immigrant Affairs. The project aimed to rectify the shortcomings of the prior method — the inconsistent and often inaccurate Google Translate — with the goal of enhancing translation quality across ten languages chosen due to their prevalence among the city's populace.

Feedback from the community, collected through focus groups and other forms of engagement, was critical to the project's direction. The time and input of these community members didn't go unpaid; about $7,600 was allocated in compensation for their valuable insights. The outcomes of these interactions were integral in developing resources, including a city-style guide and a multilingual glossary geared to guide translators and City staff alike.

As a result, Phila.gov now boasts improved translations in Arabic, English, French, Haitian Creole, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese (Mandarin), Spanish, Swahili, and Vietnamese. The initiative didn't stop there — it also brought into existence the permanent position of Translation Quality Coordinator and fueled cooperation with local organizations through $10k in funding to sustain the progress for an additional three months.

Beyond the project’s timeline, the momentum of success spurred the Polyglot Philadelphia initiative, furthering the city's commitment to language inclusivity. One of the fruits of this initiative is the Language Access Dashboard, an innovative tool that tracks the language preferences of residents utilizing city services. Moreover, the team set afoot a campaign to amplify awareness of the improved phila.gov and to augment the caliber of interpretation services.

There's no end in sight for the push towards language access. The Language Access Philly team is already eyeing to include additional languages that weren't part of the OTF project. According to the statement by the team, a pilot program is set to launch this year that will engage multilingual employees in paid language access work, a move sure to benefit not just speakers of myriad languages but the fabric of the city itself.