Readability requirements for translations

Owned by Joanne Zhou
Last updated: Feb 22, 2024 by Sharon Huang
1 min read

Readability and grade level

Readability scores tell you how easy or difficult it is to read something.

For SF.gov content, we use the Hemingway Editor to determine the “grade level” of your text. This “grade level” reflects the lowest education needed to understand that text. MSWord also shows readability scores in documents.

5th grade readability

We don’t translate pages that are over a 5th grade reading level. We do that so that SF.gov is equitable and easy to use.

Accuracy

We’ve found that higher reading levels lead to less accurate translations. If the English version is difficult to understand, our translators will not return reliable versions in other languages. We can’t commit to translating pages that we don’t think we can translate accurately.

Accessibility

The City has committed to provide information for the public at a 5th grade reading level. So everything on http://SF.gov, unless it’s legal content or specifically for experts, should be at that level.

Get help

We're happy to work with you to lower the reading level of your content.