Running multilingual public meetings is less about one big tool and more about a short list of decisions made before the gavel. This guide walks a clerk through those decisions, from choosing languages to posting transcripts afterward.
The goal is simple: a resident who reads Spanish, Vietnamese or Punjabi more comfortably than English should be able to find the meeting, follow it, and take part in public comment.
Step 1: Decide which languages to support
Start with the people you serve, not with a vendor's language list. Useful sources include:
- American Community Survey data on residents who speak English less than "very well" (the same data SB 707 uses for agenda translation).
- Requests your front counter, library or community services staff already get.
- Community groups, faith organizations and schools that work with specific language communities.
Pick a short core set for every regular meeting, and be ready to add a language for a hearing that affects a particular neighborhood. Our guide on choosing translation languages goes deeper.
Check what your tools can actually do. SentraCaptions offers English captions plus translation into 74 languages and regional variants, up to 8 per meeting. Hmong and Khmer are not supported, so if those communities matter to you, plan another route for them, such as a human interpreter or translated written materials.
Step 2: Get the agenda and notices out in those languages
A multilingual meeting starts before anyone walks in. If your body is an "eligible legislative body" under SB 707, most new requirements start July 1, 2026, including translating the agenda (not the full packet) into up to three "applicable languages," posted with the English agenda, with instructions in each language for joining by phone or internet. Digital translation tools are allowed. Confirm with your city attorney or county counsel whether your body is covered.
Even if SB 707 doesn't apply to you, the same habits help:
- Post translated agendas or summaries alongside the English version.
- Say, in each language, that live translated captions will be available and how to reach them (for example, a QR code on the agenda).
- Tell residents how to request help, and who to contact.
See the SB 707 agenda translation checklist for details.
Step 3: Set up live translated captions
During the meeting, residents need to follow what is being said, in real time. With SentraCaptions, the setup uses what you already have:
- Add SentraCaptions as one more destination on your existing encoder (Pearl, OBS, vMix and others) over RTMP or SRT. No new hardware.
- Choose the languages for the meeting, up to 8.
- Load a glossary of local names: council members, streets, neighborhoods and programs, so captions spell them right.
- Put the chamber screen on the TV in the chamber or lobby. It can show one or more languages side by side, the meeting title, a clock and a QR code.
- Share the phone page link. Residents scan the QR code and read along in their language at their own text size, with no app and no sign-in.
Captions appear about one second after speech, and the sentence in progress updates live. Every screen labels the captions as automatic and notes that they may contain errors.
Translation quality varies by language. Before you advertise a language, ask a fluent speaker (a staff member or a trusted community partner) to watch a meeting and tell you how well it reads.
Step 4: Plan for public comment in other languages
Public comment is where multilingual meetings succeed or stall. A few practical points:
- Speech recognition is English, and Spanish speakers at public comment are recognized too. Comments in other spoken languages will not be captioned accurately.
- Under SB 707, eligible bodies 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. They are not required to provide interpretation themselves.
- Decide ahead of time how you will handle a speaker who brings their own interpreter, including time limits. Write it down and apply it evenly.
For more, read public comment in more than one language.
Steps 5 and 6: run the meeting, then follow up
During the meeting
On the day, a few habits keep captions useful:
- Good audio matters most. Ask speakers to use the microphone and avoid talking over each other. Our chamber audio tips cover the basics.
- Pause captions for recess or closed session. While paused, nothing is captioned, translated, stored or billed, and the screens show "Paused." Resume when the open meeting returns.
- If you stream to YouTube Live, you can send captions in one language to the stream. YouTube shows one caption language per stream, so point viewers to the phone page for translations.
- If several rooms or meetings run at once, each gets its own screen and link.
If your agency uses CivicCA for agendas and meetings, CivicCA can start captioning when the meeting starts and pause it for recess and closed session, so the clerk has one less thing to manage. Captions show on the CivicCA dais display, the public portal and residents' phones.
After the meeting
After adjournment, download transcripts in every language as TXT or SRT (subtitle) files. They can help staff prepare minutes, though they are not official minutes. SRT files can be added to the posted recording so the video has subtitles.
Close the loop with the community too:
- Ask community partners whether residents used the translated captions and what was hard to follow.
- Add misspelled names to the glossary.
- Revisit your language list once a year, or when a new community starts showing up.
A multilingual meeting also supports SB 707's outreach goal of reaching communities that don't traditionally participate. SB 707 does not itself require live captions, but captions and live translation are a practical way to support its language-access and participation goals.
Related reading
- SentraCaptions features, including the full language list
- How SentraCaptions works with CivicCA
- Chamber screen setup guide
- Captions on residents' phones
- Contact us to talk through your meetings and languages