Court, clinic and USCIS interpreting across the US for the Afrikaans speakers who need it, plus certified translation of the bilingual Home Affairs records USCIS still requires translated.
Prism Linguistics provides Afrikaans interpreters for court hearings, depositions, medical appointments, refugee resettlement screenings and USCIS interviews anywhere in the United States, in person, by phone or by video, together with USCIS-compliant certified translation of South African and Namibian documents that carry Afrikaans headings, stamps or entries.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
Afrikaans is an unusual booking because the speaker can usually manage in English and chooses not to. A witness who wants to give evidence in the language she thinks in, an elderly farmer's widow at a cardiology appointment, a sworn statement that has to be taken in the speaker's own words: these are the Afrikaans interpreter's assignments, and they are legal and medical far more than they are casual. Our office is in New York and our Afrikaans interpreters are placed around the country, so we assign one based near the hearing or the clinic, and by phone or video we can usually connect the same day.
For years Afrikaans demand in the US was thin and scattered: a deposition in a mining or agricultural dispute, an older parent who followed a child to Texas or California, a South African expatriate community in Dallas or Orlando. The refugee program opened to South Africans in 2025 has moved the language onto the caseloads of resettlement agencies, county clinics and USCIS field offices, with the first several thousand arrivals placed mostly in Texas, Florida and California. Most of those families speak English. The grandparents, and the people from the Northern Cape and rural Western Cape who grew up in Afrikaans only, do not always.
Afrikaans is not Dutch, and a Dutch interpreter is not a substitute. The two share a root and a Dutch speaker can read an Afrikaans newspaper with effort, but spoken Afrikaans has its own grammar, its own legal and medical vocabulary, and a whole vocabulary of South African institutions, from Home Affairs to the SAPS to the magistrate's court, that a Dutch interpreter has never heard. We book Afrikaans interpreters who grew up in the language, and we ask the region, because Cape Afrikaans and the Afrikaans of the Free State do not sound alike.
No state runs a court certification exam in Afrikaans, so a court that needs one works from registered or otherwise qualified interpreters and the clerk decides what qualifies; tell us the court and the case type and we settle that before the hearing rather than on the morning. Most of our Afrikaans legal work is depositions and arbitration, often in disputes involving South African companies, where the interpreter also handles exhibits in Afrikaans and the witness expects the register of a South African courtroom. We work for courts, attorneys and law firms as a private agency, not a court-appointed vendor.
Any hospital or clinic that takes federal funding must provide an Afrikaans interpreter at no cost, and the patient who needs one is almost always older. A newly arrived family's own English is fine; their mother's is not, and the refugee health screening, the first primary care visit and the pharmacy counter all happen in her first weeks in the country. Video covers most of that. For a diagnosis conversation, a capacity assessment or a hospice discussion we send an Afrikaans medical interpreter in person.
Refugee adjustment interviews and green card interviews for spouses and parents are the routine USCIS work, with asylum interviews a smaller share. In each the officer wants the applicant's own words, and an interpreter who tidies a hesitant answer into a fluent one has altered the record. We brief every Afrikaans USCIS interpreter to render exactly what is said and to ask for a repeat rather than guess, and we do not send a family member, because the officer can refuse them and the appointment is lost.
The document looks English. It is not, for USCIS purposes. Older Home Affairs certificates, marriage records, identity books and school reports from South Africa carry Afrikaans headings, stamps and handwritten entries beside the English, and USCIS requires every non-English word translated, so a half-English page still needs a certified Afrikaans translation. The unabridged birth certificate issued since 2013 is English only, but families rarely hold only that. We translate the full page, keep Home Affairs and the magistrate's office as printed, mark the fields that were already English so the officer can see nothing was skipped, and match names to the passport. Sworn affidavits (a beëdigde verklaring), church marriage records and Namibian documents follow the same rule, and each translation carries a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy. The full document service is at certified translation.
Tell us the date, the city and the setting, or send a clear scan of the document. We reply with a fixed price and, for interpreting, a named linguist. Call +1 (833) 282 8883, email info@prismlinguistics.com, or use the quote form and you will hear back within 60 minutes during business hours.
Our only office is in New York, and our Afrikaans interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Afrikaans work is concentrated; the full list of 288 cities is below it.
Prism Linguistics is rated 4.6 out of 5 across 67 client reviews for its interpreting and translation work in the United States. That is the company-wide figure; we do not publish a separate rating per language because there is no honest way to measure one. If an Afrikaans assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.