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Asian Pacific American Heritage Month: Help the multilingual communities you serve

In celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Month, we are pleased to highlight tools and resources available in Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and other languages—most notably our updated Chinese glossary of financial terms. 

Households with limited English skills struggle to reach their financial goals because information they receive about financial products and services is difficult to translate. Part of our mission is to help ensure that clear and consistent information is available for multilingual communities. 

Chinese Glossary of Financial Terms

In 2015, we created a glossary of common financial terms to use when translating financial education materials from English to Chinese. This year we updated the glossaries to include translated financial terms used by other entities as well, including the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Internal Revenue Service, Department of Justice, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Trade Commission, Social Security Administration, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, General Services Administration, and National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals. 

We publicly share the Chinese glossary of financial terms as a free resource to help others provide financial information people who are more proficient in Chinese than in English. We invite all financial educators, government agencies, financial service providers, and other organizations serving limited English proficient communities to use the glossary when translating financial forms, disclosures, education material or any other written document. It is not required or mandated for anyone to use the glossary of terms. 

CFPB in your language

In the United States, financial products and services are generally described in English. For those who primarily speak another language, it can be challenging to understand and properly use products and services to reach financial goals. 

According to the US Census Bureau’s 2017 American Community Survey One-Year Estimates, Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Korean are some of the most widely spoken languages in the United States other than English. Our CFPB in your language page provides tools and resources to help people who have proficiency in languages other than English make informed financial decisions. In addition to written materials in their native language, people can listen and learn utilizing new audio versions of our six most popular publications. 

Other resources

We also offer a number resources for people who have proficiency in Spanish and those who work to help them:

You can find information for speakers of ArabicHaitian Creole, and Russian as well.

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