For The First Time, U.S. Census To Collect Responses In Arabic Among 13 Languages

Speakers of Arabic — one of the fastest-growing languages in the U.S. — will have one fewer barrier to participating in the upcoming 2020 census.

For the first time, the federal government is planning to officially collect census responses in Arabic along with six other new language options for the head count, including French, Haitian Creole, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese and Tagalog.

These new additions join English, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Spanish and Vietnamese in a total of 13 languages — more than doubling the number of options that were available for the last count.

"This is a huge leap forward from what we did in 2010, expanding the number of languages for the Internet and for telephone," said Jennifer Kim, an assistant division chief at the Census Bureau who oversees a centralized office formed in 2016 for translating census forms.