Translating and Interpreting Services

Online Translation

You can translate our web pages into various languages via the free facilities provided by AltaVista/Systran and Google.

Not all users of the Council’s services will have English as their first language. However, our staff will make every effort to accommodate the needs of individuals who use alternative languages.

We have a number of staff who will be happy to assist with translating a number of languages, such as French, German and Hindi, for people wishing to use the Council’s services. However, if they are unavailable, or if there is an occasion where an external interpreter is required, we can arrange for a translation service to be provided by an external company.

Services for Deaf Customers

Some users of the Council’s services may be deaf or have reduced hearing. Depending on the individual’s needs, and the type of service or enquiry, there are a number of facilities or services that the Council uses to aid communication, for example, induction loops, the BT Typetalk service, minicom or British Sign Language Interpreters.

Multikulti website

The Multikulti website aims to support citizenship through the delivery of culturally appropriate and accurately translated information in the following areas of welfare law - debt, employment, health, housing, immigration and welfare benefits. The multikulti website provides information, advice, guidance and learning materials in community languages. See Multkulti.

Displaying other languages on your web browser

If you are trying to display a webpage which is written in another language and the correct characters do not appear (often indicated by square boxes instead of the correct characters) then you need to update your web browser with the appropriate language support files.

If you are using Internet Explorer you need to go to View > Encoding > More and then select the language that you need. If support for this language is not already installed on your PC a box will appear asking you to download the relevant files from the Microsoft website.

You should do this and they will normally install themselves on your PC although sometimes you may be asked to put your operating system CD in the CD drive as well. You may need to restart your PC. If all is well the web page should now display with the correct character set.