Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much their Department has spent on translating documents into languages other than (a) English and (b) other native UK languages in each year since 2023; and what these languages were.

The Ministry of Justice has a statutory duty to provide Language Services to enable access to justice for users for whom English is not their first language and those who require visual and tactile services, under the provision of the Equality Act.

Language Service needs and spend are assessed to ensure these services offer good value for money for taxpayers while maintaining high standards of service delivery.

In FY 23/24 the total contracted spend was £915,037.52.

In FY 24/25 the total contracted spend was £1,003,283.32.

In FY 25/26 so far, the total contracted spend is £256,707.82.

The languages in this data exclude written translations into English, Welsh and Braille.

The languages translated into from English (United Kingdom) are:

Albanian (Albania)

Amharic (Ethiopia)

Arabic (Classical)

Arabic (Egypt)

Arabic (Modern Standard) Middle Eastern

Arabic (Modern Standard) North African

Arabic (Morocco)

Armenian (Armenia)

Bangla (Bangladesh)

Bosnian (Latin, Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Bulgarian (Bulgaria)

Burmese

Burmese (Myanmar)

Catalan (Catalan)

Chinese (Simplified)

Chinese (Traditional)

Croatian (Latin, Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Czech (Czech Republic)

Danish (Denmark)

Dari (Afghanistan)

Dutch (Netherlands)

Estonian (Estonia)

Filipino (Philippines)

Finnish (Finland)

French (Belgium)

French (France)

Georgian (Georgia)

German (Austria)

German (Germany)

Greek (Greece)

Gujarati (India)

Hebrew (Israel)

Hindi (India)

Hungarian (Hungary)

Icelandic (Iceland)

Indonesian (Indonesia)

Italian (Italy)

Japanese (Japan)

Kinyarwanda (Rwanda)

Kiswahili (Kenya)

Korean (Korea)

Kurdish (Bahdini)

Kurdish (Sorani)

Latvian (Latvia)

Lingala (Congo DRC)

Lithuanian (Lithuania)

Macedonian (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia)

Malay (Malaysia)

Malayalam (India)

Maltese (Malta)

Mirpuri (Central Asia)

Mongolian (Cyrillic, Mongolia)

Nepali (Nepal)

Norwegian, Bokmål (Norway)

Norwegian, Nynorsk (Norway)

Oromo (Ethiopia)

PahariPotwari (Central Asia)

Pashto (Afghanistan)

Persian (Afghanistan)

Persian (Iran)

Polish (Poland)

Portuguese (Brazil)

Portuguese (Portugal)

Punjabi (India)

Punjabi (Pakistan)

Romanian (Romania)

Romany (Europe)

Russian (Russia)

Serbian (Cyrillic, Serbia)

Serbian (Latin, Serbia)

Shona (Latin, Zimbabwe)

Sinhala (Sri Lanka)

Slovak (Slovakia)

Slovenian (Slovenia)

Somali (Somalia)

Spanish (Argentina)

Spanish (Latin America)

Spanish (Mexico)

Spanish (Spain)

Swedish (Sweden)

Tajik (Cyrillic, Tajikistan)

Tamazight (Latin, Algeria)

Tamil (India)

Tetum (Timor)

Thai (Thailand)

Tigrinya (Eritrea)

Turkish (Turkey)

Ukranian (Ukraine)

Urdu (Islamic Republic of Pakistan)

Uzbek (Latin, Uzbekistan)

Vietnamese (Vietnam)

Wolof (Senegal)

Yoruba (Nigeria)

The Languages translated into from English (United States) are:

Arabic (Egypt)

Hungarian (Hungary)

Polish (Poland)

Romanian (Romania)