Bilingual Glossaries, Dictionaries, and Style Guides

The bilingual glossaries, dictionaries, and Spanish language style guides available in this section are resources for government employees, translators, and communications professionals who work with the government to improve the way we communicate with the public in languages other than English.

Glossaries We gathered existing bilingual glossaries from around the government and put them in one central location for easy access. The glossaries are organized by topic, some offer a variety of languages, and come from different government agencies in the federal, state, or local governments or organizations commissioned by the government to produce them.

Dictionaries The Bilingual Dictionary from the National Cancer Institute is a collection of over 8,300 cancer terms in English and Spanish to provide a comprehensive cancer vocabulary that can be easily used with a variety of audiences when communicating complex information.

Multilingual Language Style Guides The Multilingual Language Style Guides contain information on grammar and style issues to standardize the use of languages across government. Also includes style guides from other government entities.

Note: This is a living page, please help us update it, improve it and make it more comprehensive. Send updates to existing resources, new resources and comments to Laura Godfrey, Lead, Multilingual Community of Practice.

Government Bilingual Glossaries

General Terminology

U.S. Department of Labor (DOL)

DOL’s English-Spanish glossary (PDF, 5 MB, 73 pages) includes terms related to job-seeking, employment, retirement and other areas related to the Department of Labor’s work.

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), UAS en Espanol:

UAS LEP (limited English proficient) Initiative Spanish Glossary

U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), Office of Communications and Public Liaison (OCPL)

Bilingual (English and Spanish) Glossary of Terms

SSA’s English-Spanish Wordbank Glossary offers information ranging from states and days of the weeks to health.

Social Security Information in Other Languages:

Election Terminology

U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC)

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission offers translations of Glossary of Election Terminology in Amharic, Arabic, Apache, Bengali, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Navajo, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Yup’ik with about 1,300 voting terms, phrases commonly used in the administration of U.S. elections..

Financial Terminology

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)

The Bureau has more than 1,200 words and terms in five languages:

Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA)

FHFA (along with partner agencies) has created a searchable English-Spanish Glossary of Mortgage Translations. Glossaries in other languages are planned for the future.

Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

The Glossary of Tax Words and Phrases Used in Publications Issued by the IRS is currently available for download in six languages (all were last revised in August, 2018):

Publication 850 (EN-CN-S): English-Chinese [Simplified] (1.5 MB PDF, 18 pages)
Publication 850 (EN-CN-T): English-Chinese [Traditional] (1.5 MB PDF, 18 pages)
Publication 850 (EN-KR): English-Korean (1.4 MB PDF, 20 pages)
Publication 850 (EN-RU): English-Russian (1.4 MB PDF, 25 pages)
Publication 850 (EN-SP): English-Spanish (1.5 MB PDF, 18 pages)
Publication 850 (EN-VN): English-Vietnamese (1.3 MB PDF, 21 pages)

Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC)

Financial and retirement terminology:

Glossary of Terms: English to Spanish

Health and Well-being

General Services Administration (GSA)

The Digital.gov Multilingual Community of Practice, GSA’s 10x Multilingual Glossary Tool project, and an interagency working group worked to develop a shared translation glossary of health terms in Spanish.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA):
Offers the Glossary for Organ Donation and Transplantation on their English website, and their Spanish website.
Office of Minority Health (OMH), Office of Minority Health Resource Center (OMHRC):
The HIV Prevention Bilingual Glossary (HPBG) is a collaborative effort to provide linguistic support to individuals and organizations working with Spanish-speaking populations in the U.S. Download: HIV/AIDS Prevention Bilingual Glossary, English - Spanish, First Edition 2009 (13.4 MB, PDF, 237 pages)
The Early Childhood Learning & Knowledge Center offers a glossary and a style guide:
- the Head Start Bilingual Glossary (for translating Head Start materials from English into Spanish), and
- Style Guide for Translations into Spanish.
Medicare.gov offers a glossary of medicare related terms in English and Spanish:
- Medicare.gov English Glossary
- Medicare.gov Spanish Glossary

Environment

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

The EPA’s Glosario ambiental bilingüe has a wealth of terminology, abbreviations, and acronyms used by many of the EPA’s environmental programs.

San Francisco City and County

The Translation Glossary page provides a link to download a .xlsx spreadsheet file for glossaries in three languages: Spanish, Chinese, and Filipino (Tagalog).

Education

Below is a compilation of available resources from different education organizations.

The English-Spanish Glossary of Student Financial Aid and Postsecondary Education (513 kb, PDF, 44 pages) is led by TG and the U.S. Department of Education in partnership with many other organizations.
The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has a resource center for K-12 education-related terminology and other language resources.
This glossary of Special Education terminology, Glossary of Spanish Translations of Common IDEA Terms, was commissioned by the Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). In this 3rd edition, new terms were added to reflect the common use of digital terminology. This edition also includes an appendix with terms related to the transition to adult life.

Dictionaries

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health

The National Cancer Institute has a dictionary of cancer terms in English and Spanish.

Multilingual Language Style Guides

USAGov Bilingual Style Guide

The USAGov Bilingual Style Guide is a practical guide on the best practices used to create bilingual digital content for USAGov and USAGov en Español.

The City and County of San Francisco

The Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs has translation style guides for Chinese, Spanish, and Filipino for the City and County of San Francisco.

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

NIH has a new Spanish Style Guide available in English (PDF, 315 KB, 33 pages) and Spanish (PDF, 427 KB, 32 pages) .

Additional Resources

Spanish Grammar
TThis page was peer reviewed by Leticia Molinero, Maria Cornelio, and Jack Segura, members of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language (ANLE).
Frequently Mistranslated English Terms
This page was peer reviewed by Leticia Molinero, Maria Cornelio, and Jack Segura, members of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language (ANLE).
Information Technology Terms
Internet Resources English/Spanish Internet Terminology Glossaries
Spanish Health Care Terms in the United States
This page was peer reviewed by Leticia Molinero, Maria Cornelio, and Jack Segura, members of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language (ANLE).
Glosario Técnico de Computación, Electrónica y Telecomunicaciones (computing, electronics and telecommunications glossary)
The glossary’s landing page is in Spanish. Click on the letter of the English term you need to translate and you’ll be directed to the Spanish equivalent term. Also included in the glossary are definitions (shown in italics when applicable) and the abbreviation of the country (listed in brackets) where a translation is used. If a country code is not shown, it is assumed that the translation is valid in all countries where Spanish is spoken.

Hurricane guidance for U.S. government websites and social media