Oak Park’s village board approved a new language access plan to prioritize equitable access to government services through translation and interpretation services and with the help of bilingual staff.
Language access is the ability of individuals to obtain information or services in a language they know. The intention of the plan, according to village officials, is to ensure all residents can participate in social, economic and civic activities in Oak Park. Improving language access also ensures legal compliance and community trust, officials pointed out.
“Government is one of many institutions that unfortunately perpetuate these kinds of historical harms of people who speak other languages,” said Danielle Walker, the village’s chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer. “It’s such a tremendous step forward to be able to have a plan and a policy.”
The language access plan will benefit both those with limited English proficiency and English language learners. In Oak Park, the village reported 13% of residents speak a language other than English, including Spanish, Polish, Mandarin and Tagalog.
The second most-spoken language in Oak Park is Spanish with 3,144 individuals, or 6.2% of the population, speaking it. The village is also planning accommodations for deaf or hard of hearing individuals.
The village intends to achieve greater language access by incorporating multilingual staff, contracts with interpretation and translation services, and technology including real-time interpretation devices or video remote interpretation.
Translation services are related to reading materials. Interpretation services relate to verbal or signed communication. Interpreters accurately convey speech into the desired language, without any changes. The terms are not interchangeable.
“If someone comes into Village Hall, and they say, ‘I am mad at Dr. Walker,’ I want the interpreter to say, ‘They are mad at Dr. Walker,’” Walker said. “Not, ‘Oh, they have questions for Dr. Walker.’ No, that’s not what they said.”
Services to residents and visitors will be free, and signs notifying individuals of the services will be posted in Village Hall. The cost to the village won’t be free, however. The proposed budget for these efforts is $100,000, some of which are one-time costs.
Translating vital village documents will be about $40,000. Contracting phone and web services will be another $40,000. In-person interpretation services will cost $10,000. And new software and devices will cost $8,000 and $2,000, respectively.
Village staff will also be trained in these policies and cultural competency. Walker emphasized that village staff will not make any assumptions about an individual based on race, nationality or ethnicity. An accent is not an indicator of an individual needing language access services, she said, and how “well” someone speaks English is not correlated to their intelligence.
Village staff will also avoid using family members, neighbors, friends or Google translate to provide language services unless in an emergency. Doing so can place an undue burden on someone, Walker explained, especially children.
“Any person should be able to come into Village Hall and access the services they need on their own without figuring out how to bring their own interpreter,” Trustee Brian Straw said. “This really restores the human dignity that we strip away when we fail to appropriately provide language access.”
Trustee Lucia Robinson said she loved the focus on dignity in providing interpretation services, too.
“There’s such a tendency to take away the agency of individuals who are not proficient in English,” she said. “It’s really important to have a program that’s got the level of integrity that is cognizant of not taking away their agency … They’re fully capable of deciding for themselves [if] they want their own interpreter or do they want to rely on village interpretation services.”
It is possible artificial intelligence could be useful in translation services in the future, Walker said, but right now, AI can tend to misinterpret some phrases or colloquial expressions.
Robinson said she’d like to work with other Oak Park boards to improve language access village-wide. Trustee Ravi Parakkat agreed.
“[This] really shows where Oak Park is trying to go, as far as being intentional in being able to service all of our community and not just the primary English speakers,” Trustee Chibuike Enyia said.
The village intends to implement this program throughout 2025.