Language access statistics in the United States: a reference for 2026

This page collects the public statistics most often cited in United States language access work. Each figure names the document it comes from and the year of that data, so a reader can go to the source rather than take our word for it. Every number below was rechecked against its source in August 2026. Figures that could not be traced to a specific published document were removed rather than rounded off or hedged.

Languages spoken at home

Census figures on this page come from the American Community Survey 2020-2024 five-year estimates, tables C16001 and B16001. Both report language spoken at home for the population aged 5 and over. That base matters when comparing figures across sources: these are counts of people, not households, and they exclude children under 5.

• Of 316,142,560 United States residents aged 5 and over, 70,375,520 speak a language other than English at home. That is 22.3 percent.
• Spanish accounts for 42,869,908 of them, or 61 percent of everyone who speaks a non-English language at home.
• California has the highest share of any state at 44.4 percent, and West Virginia the lowest at 2.5 percent. All 51 state-level geographies were computed from table C16001.

Limited English proficiency

The Census Bureau does not use the term "limited English proficient." It asks people who speak a non-English language at home how well they speak English, and the LEP population is conventionally taken to be those who answer anything below "very well." Every LEP figure on this page is that measure, and it is self-reported.

• 27,139,643 United States residents aged 5 and over speak English less than "very well," which is 8.6 percent of that population and 38.6 percent of everyone who speaks a non-English language at home.
• Spanish speakers are 17,218,782 of that total, or 63 percent.
• In California the LEP population is 6,499,255, or 17.5 percent. In Los Angeles County it is 2,174,450, or 23.4 percent. In Nevada it is 337,676, or 11.2 percent.

The federal framework, as it stands in 2026

This section changed substantially between 2025 and 2026, and it is the part of any language access reference most likely to be out of date. Executive Order 13166, which for twenty-five years was the operative federal LEP instruction, was revoked in March 2025. The statute it was built on was not.

Two points are worth stating plainly, because the revocation of EO 13166 is widely misread. Executive Order 14224 says that "nothing in this order, however, requires or directs any change in the services provided by any agency," and that agency heads are not required to stop producing documents or services in languages other than English. And the revocation of an executive order does not touch Title VI itself, which is a statute, or Lau v. Nichols, which construes it. What changed is the federal instruction to agencies, not the underlying prohibition.

Court interpreting

Federal court interpreting rests on the Court Interpreters Act, 28 U.S.C. 1827, passed in 1978 and amended in 1988 by Public Law 100-702. The Administrative Office of the United States Courts sets certification standards under it.

• The Federal Court Interpreter Certification Examination was introduced in 1980. The Administrative Office states that it "is currently offered only in Spanish."
• Certification programs were developed for Spanish, Navajo and Haitian Creole. The Navajo and Haitian Creole programs are no longer offered, and the Administrative Office describes those interpreters as having been certified only during the early nineties.
• More than 900 Spanish interpreters have been federally certified, and the Administrative Office puts Spanish at about 96 percent of total federal interpreter usage.
• For every other language, federal courts appoint interpreters classified as professionally qualified or language skilled, decided case by case by the local court.
• For long or complex proceedings, federal guidance allows two interpreters working as a team, to mitigate interpreter fatigue. The guidance sets no fixed time limit and tells the team to agree in advance when and how they will switch.
• Sources: Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Federal Court Interpreter Orientation Manual and Glossary, revised December 2024; Guide to Judiciary Policy, Volume 5, Chapter 5, section 530; Administrative Office interpreter categories page.

California runs the largest state program. The Judicial Council reports 1,820 interpreters on its Master List of certified and registered court interpreters as of July 2024, across 58 superior courts, with Spanish accounting for 88 percent of courtroom interpretations statewide. Certification is available in American Sign Language plus twelve spoken languages: Arabic, Cantonese, Eastern Armenian, Farsi (Persian), Filipino (Tagalog), Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Punjabi (India), Russian, Spanish and Vietnamese. Every other spoken language is handled through the registered category.

Remote interpreting peaked at 11 percent of California court interpretations in FY 2020-21 and fell to 3 percent by FY 2023-24. Telephonic interpreting went from 4 percent to 1 percent over the same period. In-person work is 96 percent of the total. The Judicial Council study treats that decline as a missed opportunity rather than a success, and recommends expanding video remote interpreting to reach languages that cannot be covered locally.

Healthcare interpreting

The most concrete published evidence on what language barriers cost in clinical settings comes from a study of closed malpractice claims conducted by the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health for the National Health Law Program. Researchers reviewed the claims of one carrier insuring in four states and identified 35 closed claims, from January 2005 through May 2009, in which language barriers played a part. That was 2.5 percent of the claims reviewed.

• The carrier paid $2,289,000 in damages and settlements on those 35 claims, plus $2,793,800 in legal fees.
• Two children and three adults died. One patient was left comatose, one underwent a leg amputation, and a child suffered major organ damage.
• In 32 of the 35 cases the providers did not use a competent interpreter. In 12 cases family members or friends interpreted, including minor children in two of them.
• Twelve claims involved a failure to translate documents such as informed consent forms and discharge instructions.
• In none of the 35 cases did the medical records show that a competent interpreter had been offered and declined.
• Source: Kelvin Quan and Jessica Lynch, The High Costs of Language Barriers in Medical Malpractice, National Health Law Program.

Two national credentials exist for medical interpreters, and both are active. The Certification Commission for Healthcare Interpreters offers CoreCHI, CoreCHI-Performance and the Certified Healthcare Interpreter credential, the last of these in Spanish, Arabic and Mandarin; its CHI-Spanish program has been accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies since 2012, and CoreCHI began sunsetting on 1 January 2025 in favor of CoreCHI-Performance. The National Board of Certification for Medical Interpreters offers full certification in six languages, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Russian, Vietnamese and Korean, plus the language-neutral Hub-CMI. Sources: cchicertification.org; certifiedmedicalinterpreters.org.

Sign language interpreting

There is no federal count of American Sign Language users. The American Community Survey asks about languages spoken at home and does not record signed languages, so figures circulating for the size of the ASL-using population cannot be traced to a federal source. The usable numbers are credential counts and court coverage data.

• The Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf currently awards two national certifications: the National Interpreter Certification and the Certified Deaf Interpreter credential.
• Examinations are administered by the Center for the Assessment of Sign Language Interpretation, which RID established in 2016. RID retains eligibility and credentialing.
• The Specialist Certificate: Legal and the Educational Certificate: K-12 were both placed under moratorium effective 1 January 2016 and are no longer awarded. Interpreters who already hold them keep them and remain RID certified.
• California credentials ASL court interpreters under Evidence Code section 754. As of FY 2023-24 the state had 50 credentialed ASL court interpreters covering 82.06 percent of ASL court events, and the Judicial Council estimates 11 more are needed for full coverage.
• ADA Titles II and III require covered entities to provide qualified interpreters as effective communication, and the covered entity bears the cost.
• Sources: rid.org certifications pages; Judicial Council of California, California Court Interpreter Workforce Study, December 2025, Table 13.

Translation

The American Translators Association credential is the main measure of translation competence in the United States, and the association describes it as "the only widely recognized measure of translation competence in the U.S." Certification is granted in a specific pair and direction, not in a language.

• Certification is available in 35 language combinations: 17 from English and 18 into English.
• Three of those, Chinese into English, Hungarian into English and Persian into English, are temporarily unavailable.
• The association reports that fewer than 2,000 of its more than 10,000 members hold the credential, and that the current pass rate is under 20 percent.
• A certified translation and a certified translator are different things. A certified translation is one accompanied by a signed statement of completeness and accuracy, and the translator producing it does not have to hold ATA certification.
• Source: American Translators Association, Guide to ATA Certification.

How to cite and correct this page

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