The site offers Spanish, Chinese (Simplified), Vietnamese, Arabic, French, and Swahili as automatic-translation options. Names appear in each language in the Translate menu on every page.
Why these languages
Kansas City's Language Access Office presentation for Ordinance 240165 identifies the original five individually named languages (Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Arabic, and French) among the city's major language-access needs. Its comparison also includes the collective category “Amharic, Somali or other Afro-Asiatic languages,” plus Punjabi. A collective category is not an individual language; these five choices should not be described as a precise current ranking of all individual languages or of the entire Kansas City metro.
Source: KCMO Language Access Office presentation, page 7. This is a published city language-access priority source, not a new resident survey. The menu can be expanded as local partners identify needs.
Swahili addition — October 17, 2026
Swahili (Kiswahili) is the sixth menu option. Americans Against Language Barriers’ Kansas City metro profile, based on 2020–2024 ACS public-use microdata, estimates 4,332 Swahili speakers (margin of error about 1,000), compared with 2,735 Amharic speakers. This supports Swahili as a practical addition; it does not establish an exact ranking within KCMO city limits or imply one language represents all African communities. The city’s grouped African-language categories cannot settle that individual-language ranking.
Native names appear on the left and English names on the right. Arabic retains right-to-left text within its own isolated label without reversing the menu row.
How translation works
Selecting a language opens Google Translate in a new tab. Google receives the public reading-copy URL and handles the automatic translation under its own terms. No Google translation widget, tracker, or script loads on the original NeighborhoodOS page.
The reading copy excludes editable forms, embedded content, and scripts. It never includes a visitor's answers. Return to the original tab to use the private brief or interactive quizzes. Existing private input remains in that original tab and is not part of the translation URL.
Automatic translation can make mistakes, especially with service rules, dates, legal language, or names. It is not a reviewed translation or a promise of interpreting services. Use the original source and contact KCDD for language help or corrections. The separately published Spanish lesson remains available on the site.