Human translations on SF.gov
Table of contents
We can only accurately human-translate content that’s Grade 5 or lower. We can help you write content to Grade 5.
SF.gov sends most human translation work to a vendor, Lionbridge. They usually take 5 to 8 business days to get back.
If you need translation work that’s not an SF.gov webpage, you can contact OCEIA’s Language Access Unit.
Requesting translations for an SF.gov page
☞ Fill out the translation request form
If you are working with DS on an end-to-end service on SF.gov (usually a form), we will organize the human translation process for you.
Newly published pages
Fill out as many fields in the request form as you can. This will help us with our translation workflow.
Updated pages
Any updates you make in English to a human-translated page will not be reflected in other languages. You must fill out the request form anew. Indicate that it’s an update.
You do not need to fill out all the fields, but providing a Word or Google Doc showing the updates is very useful.
How translations appear on SF.gov
Any page can be displayed in one of SF’s threshold languages by using the language picker on the top right.
If no human translation published
The page will be machine-translated by Google Translate.
Pages that do not have human translations will show a node number when you hover over a link in the language picker.
As of July 2021, the SF.gov homepage and all topic pages cannot have human translations published. They are only machine-translated.
For Chinese, we have found that Google Translate will translate “the City” capitalized into “New York City.”
If you will use “the City” in your content, you must have it sent for human translation. Or you can replace “the City” with “city”, “SF”, or “San Francisco.”
Note about media files in Resource Collection content types
File titles and descriptions are shown in full on Resource Collection pages. The text is not translated, not even by Google. This is because the file itself will be in a single language. Viewing the page in another language does not change the URL of the file.
If human translations are published
The latest version of the human-translated content is shown.
Pages that have a human translation will have a full URL when you hover over a link in the language picker.
For updated content
If there are any updates only in English to existing sections, they will not be reflected until another human translation is published.
If sections are deleted in the English version, those sections are also deleted from all translations.
If you revert a page in English to a previous version, all human translations of the page are also reverted.