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Interpreting and translating services

Find out about the interpreting and translation services we offer to people who need assistance to access our services.

We provide interpreting and translation services to people who need help to access our services.

Suffolk County Council use INTRAN to provide our translation and interpreting services.

The main languages that are spoken in Suffolk apart from English include:

  • Portuguese
  • Romanian
  • Polish
  • Bengali
  • Kurdish
  • Lithuanian
  • Arabic

There are over 140 languages spoken in Suffolk, and we can use interpreters for any of these when needed.

If you have difficulties accessing our information or speaking or understanding English, you can communicate with us using the following interpreting and translation services:

  • British Sign Language (BSL)
  • minicom
  • telephone interpreting
  • face-to-face interpreting

British Sign Language (BSL)

If you need a BSL interpreter to access our services or to communicate with us, we can provide this for you free of charge.

Please inform us that you require this service by phoning 0345 606 6067 or contacting us below.

Interpreting into different languages

If you, or someone you know, needs an interpreter to access our services or to communicate with us, we can provide this for you free of charge.

To arrange this please phone 0345 606 6067 or contact us below to let us know what your first language is. 

Documents in different formats or languages

We will consider providing versions of our documents and leaflets in a range of languages, large print, Braille and audiotape upon request.

We may provide extracts of documents or speak to you through an interpreter if that is more appropriate.

To arrange this please phone 0345 606 6067 or contact us below.

Please be aware that we use an external translation service, so there may be a delay in providing the format you require.

Website translation

You can translate our website suffolk.gov.uk into your preferred language. You can do this by changing the language settings for your browser (such as Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari). 

If you're not sure how to change the language settings for your browser, try searching on Google to find out to do this. 

Suffolk County Council is not responsible for browser translations of our website, and we can't guarantee the accuracy of tools such as Google Translate.