Discussion Group: Coping with languages other than English
Chairs: Brian Gordon, Tangent & Masoud Lashkari, Multikulti Co-ordinator, London Advice Services Alliance

Some council areas, notably large urban councils, have large sub-populations speaking a huge number of languages other than English. Often these language groups are also among key social groups in need of access to council support including housing and benefits.

It is not practical for councils to provide information on all services in all local resident languages on their websites. So what is the best approach? Should some services be targeted more than others for translation, how can interpreters be used, and how could councils share the cost and burden of translation into key languages? Come along to find out more and share your own experiences.

Points to be covered include:

1) Translation is time consuming and costly, So it is vital to be clear on how to decide which languages to select and how we assess that it was really a needed one.
2) For a given topic there might be many documents, so how do you choose which to translate? how to assess which documents are really needed?
3) To achieve an accurate, appropriate and needed translated document, does the involvement of community groups matter?