The Office of Immigrant Affairs’ Language Access Program team and the Free Library of Philadelphia collaborated on the creation of the Language Help Here! Campaign. The campaign’s main goal is to provide all residents, regardless of language, access to City services and information which is one of the major reasons we are a Certified Welcoming city.

Watch the Campaign’s Video

As part of the campaign, the Language Access team and the Free Library of Philadelphia created a video that helps both city employees and community members understand how the telephonic interpretation process works. It is as easy as dialing and requesting the language needed by the community member!

Telephonic Interpretation

One of the major goals of the Language Help Here! Campaign is to increase awareness of telephonic interpretation, a service that is available in any language. City employees have been trained on how to use over-the-phone interpretation to communicate with linguistically diverse residents in the language of their choice.

The Language Access Philly Program is committed to data transparency and has made available the number of transactions using professional translation and interpretation services. Please visit the Language Usage Dashboard and filter by ‘service detail’ to find out the number of calls to connect with interpreters.

The intention of this campaign is to raise awareness of already existing city resources and to allow diverse residents of Philadelphia to easily access government services in the language of their preference. The Office of Immigrant Affairs and the Free Library highly encourage anyone in Philadelphia to request telephonic interpretation when visiting city offices and using city services.

→Language Access website

Visit the Language Access website to learn more about our program and what we do.

→I speak card

Download the I Speak card in the language of your preference which can be used to help city employees to identify the language needed for telephonic interpretation.