City council meeting translation used to mean a printed agenda in Spanish and, on a good night, an interpreter at the back of the room. Clerks now have more ways to translate city council meetings as they happen, and new state rules are putting the question on more councils' to-do lists.
What the rules ask for, and what they don't
SB 707 (Durazo), the Brown Act modernization bill signed October 3, 2025, starts most of its new requirements for “eligible legislative bodies” on July 1, 2026. Eligible bodies include city councils of cities with 30,000 or more residents, or cities in counties of 600,000 or more. Confirm with your city attorney whether your council is covered.
For covered councils, the language-related pieces are:
- Agenda translation. Agendas (not the full packet) must be translated into “applicable languages,” determined from American Community Survey data on residents who speak English less than “very well,” up to three languages. Translated agendas are posted with the English agenda and include instructions, in that language, for joining by phone or internet. Digital translation tools are allowed.
- Reasonable assistance. Councils must “reasonably assist” members of the public who want to translate a meeting or receive interpretation, as long as it doesn't disrupt the meeting. Councils are not required to provide interpretation themselves.
- Outreach. Councils must make reasonable efforts to reach communities that don't traditionally participate.
SB 707 does not itself require live captions or live translation of the meeting. Live translated captions are a practical way to support the bill's language-access and participation goals. For the agenda side, see our SB 707 agenda translation checklist.
Three ways to translate city council meetings
Human interpreters
An interpreter listens and speaks the meeting in another language, either at the same time (simultaneous) or in turns (consecutive). Interpreters are especially useful when a resident wants to speak at public comment in their own language and be understood by the council. They need to be scheduled ahead, and you'll usually need one per language.
Translated agendas and documents
Written translation covers what residents read before the meeting: the agenda, notices and instructions for participating. It helps people decide whether to come, but it doesn't help them follow the discussion once it starts.
Live translated captions
Live captions turn the meeting audio into English text, and machine translation turns that text into other languages. With SentraCaptions, captions appear about one second after speech, and translation is available in 75 languages, up to 8 per meeting. Residents read along on the chamber screen or on their own phone by scanning a QR code, with no app and no sign-in. This is text, not spoken interpretation.
Many councils combine all three: translated agendas, live translated captions every meeting, and an interpreter for hearings where they expect a particular community to speak.
Choosing your languages
Start with the same American Community Survey data you use for agenda translation, then talk to community organizations, libraries and schools about who actually comes to meetings or wants to. A few practical points:
- You can offer more languages for captions than the three agenda languages; up to 8 can run in a meeting.
- Translation quality varies by language. Ask a fluent speaker to review a recorded meeting in the languages that matter most to you.
- Hmong and Khmer are not supported. If your community needs them, plan another approach, such as an interpreter.
More detail is in choosing translation languages.
A step-by-step rollout
- Confirm coverage. Ask your city attorney whether SB 707's eligible-body rules apply to your council.
- Pick languages. Use census data plus community input, as above.
- Build a glossary. Add council members' names, street names, neighborhoods and program names so captions spell them correctly.
- Connect your encoder. Add SentraCaptions as one more destination on the encoder you already stream with (Pearl, OBS, vMix and others) over RTMP or SRT. No new hardware.
- Set up the chamber screen. Put the full-screen caption display on the TV in the chamber or lobby, with the QR code visible.
- Tell people. Mention live translated captions and the QR code on your agenda, your public meetings webpage and in your outreach to community groups.
- Run a test meeting. Check audio levels, glossary spellings and how the screen reads from the back row.
- Pause for recess and closed session. While paused nothing is captioned, translated, stored or billed, and screens show “Paused.”
- Keep the transcripts. After the meeting, download transcripts in every language as TXT or SRT files. They are not official minutes, but they can help staff prepare minutes.
Public comment in other languages
Speech recognition is English, and Spanish speakers at public comment are recognized too. For a speaker using another language, an interpreter is still the most direct way for the council to understand them. Decide ahead of time how a resident can request one, and how you'll “reasonably assist” someone who brings their own. See public comment in more than one language.
If your agency uses CivicCA for agendas and meetings, CivicCA starts captioning when the meeting starts and pauses it for recess and closed session. Captions show on the CivicCA dais display, the public portal and residents' phones, and transcripts and subtitle files can go with the meeting video.