Friday, 14/06/2024 16:44 (GMT+7)
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has freshly voted unanimously to formally recognize Vietnamese as an official language of the city.
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| Member of San Francisco Board of Supervisors Shamann Walton spoke on June 11, recognizing Vietnamese as the official language in San Francisco. (Source: San Francisco Chronicle) |
The move, alongside other changes to the US city’s language access ordinance, is aimed at ensuring that residents can be served in the language they are most comfortable in, the Vietnam News Agency quoted the information of the San Francisco Chronicle.
The ordinance, issued in 2001, previously required city departments to translate services into any language with at least 10,000 speakers in the city who have limited English proficiency. Its recent amendment lowered the threshold to 6,000, allowing the inclusion of Vietnamese to the list previously consisting of only Chinese, Spanish, and Filipino.
According to the city’s language data dashboard, a total of 6,791 San Francisco residents identify as primarily Vietnamese speakers. The city will now has to provide telephonic interpretations, website text, written notices, and other official services in Vietnamese./.
BTA