Gothamist | By Arya Sundaram — Published Jan 29, 2025
New York City is contracting with a nonprofit to provide free interpreter services at government offices, while employing immigrants in the process.
The Community Interpreter Bank, as it is called, will be run by the nonprofit New York Immigration Coalition, initially under a $1.4 million city grant from 2024.
Robert Agyemang, the coalition’s vice president of advocacy, said the service is set to launch in late February or early March and will provide language assistance in New York City’s 10 most commonly spoken foreign languages, including Spanish, French and Chinese.
“It’s a wholesale investment into the development and efficiency of language services throughout NYC,” Agyemang said. The initiative comes as local officials have enacted more mandates to bolster the city government’s interpretation and translation services to ensure foreign-language speakers can access city services, including shelters and public benefits.
But many agencies still struggle to comply with laws like 2017’s Local Law 30, which requires city agencies to provide telephonic interpretation in at least 100 different languages and to translate key documents into the 10 most commonly spoken foreign languages.
Agyemang said the city grant will fund operations through June. The coalition is developing a new proposal for continuing operations thereafter.
Interpreters with the bank will provide free help at city-funded legal service providers, city assistance centers for asylum-seekers and other community organizations.
The coalition is working with CUNY’s Hostos Community College to develop a free or low-cost certification and testing program for interpreters. The school will also eventually train interpreters, including for niche interpretation services such as the medical, legal and courtroom fields.
The Community Interpreter Bank will be accompanied by three different worker-owned language co-ops providing more niche language services for African, Asian and Indigenous languages. The African languages co-op, called Afrilingual, launched in September 2023.
The service is modeled on a similar program for legal interpretation started in 2007 in Washington, D.C. Its launch follows the advocacy of local officials, including Councilmember Shahana Hanif and former city Comptroller Scott Stringer.
Nearly half of New Yorkers speak a language other than English at home, and nearly 1 in 4 have limited English proficiency, according to Census survey data from 2018.
