On Tuesday, the San Francisco City Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to designate Vietnamese as an official language in the city, requiring enhanced translation services.

This decision, part of broader updates to San Francisco’s language access regulations, aims to ensure that residents can access services comfortably in their preferred language.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, this means all city government announcements must now be translated into Vietnamese for the local community.

Vietnamese joins Chinese, Spanish, and Filipino as languages for which the city must provide translated services.

San Francisco’s language data dashboard shows that nearly 6,800 residents primarily speak Vietnamese. Consequently, the city is obligated to offer telephonic interpretations, translated website content, written notifications, and other official services in Vietnamese.

Introduced last year by District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton, the ordinance aims to expand language access, enabling immigrant communities to more fully participate in government processes.