Hartford, Google partner to provide real-time translation for city meetings in 80 languages

Mayor Arulampalam announced that the City of Hartford has partnered with Google to provide real-time translation services in 80 different languages for City Council and Board of Education meetings, beginning immediately.

The mayor said the work will be delivered through Google Workspace and Translation AI and described the move as budget-neutral and part of a broader push to make city government more accessible to immigrant and multilingual residents. “Hartford is the first city in the nation to offer real time translation services in 80 different languages for all city council meetings and board of ed meetings,” the mayor said.

Google’s Cam Groves, director of the Rapid Innovation team, said the company will bring two-way translation to roughly 120,000 residents and that the technology supports hybrid participation so people can join meetings in person or virtually. “This capability will be brought to 120,000 residents with the opportunity to participate in local government in almost 80 languages and growing,” Groves said.

City leaders said the partnership builds on Hartford’s existing Google Workspace deployment and that officials hope to expand use of Translation AI to other functions such as 3-1-1 to help staff respond to calls in multiple languages. Groves described the approach as using existing investments to design targeted solutions rather than requiring large new expenditures.

Councilwoman Molly Rosato, who has advocated for translation services since 2018, joined a live demonstration of the system. Rosato praised the mayor for moving the effort forward and said the demonstration showed how individual participants can receive and send translated text during meetings.

An attendee, Art Felton of International Hartford, praised the announcement but urged the city to translate more official documents and forms, saying many remain available only in English and that links to translated versions are not always easy to find. “The city forms are invariably in English,” Felton said. The mayor responded that document translation is part of a wider rollout and called the announcement a first step with more actions to follow.

Officials did not announce a formal vote, ordinance, contract number or a detailed timeline for full citywide rollout during the event. Staff and Google representatives said they will continue working together on implementation and potential future features such as auto-detected speaker translation.