Pursuant to court settlement, the state needed to survey county food stamp service area language populations and then translate forms into any newly identified languages. This letter informs counties that all Food Stamp Program (FSP) forms
and specified forms jointly used with the CalWORKs program now will be translated into: Cushite, Formosan, Japanese, Mien, Punjabi, Portuguese, Syriac, and Ukrainian. The above languages are in addition to the Arabic, Armenian, Cambodian, Chinese, Farsi, Hmong, Korean, Lao, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese translations. (PS: Since Formosan uses written Chinese, this is probably not a new form language.) The bigger news: the state is not providing additional funding for automation, since “due to the limited number of applicants/recipients expected to require and/or request forms in the identified languages.” Counties are reminded they must use the forms, however, and how to get them on the internet. [Download]