Living Neo-Aramaic for the asylum office, the courtroom and the clinic, matched to the speaker's church and village, and classical Aramaic for scholars, parishes and engravers.
Prism Linguistics provides Aramaic interpreters for the spoken Neo-Aramaic languages, Assyrian Sureth, Chaldean and Turoyo, at asylum interviews, court hearings, depositions and medical appointments anywhere in the United States, in person, by phone or by video, together with certified English translation of Aramaic church records and letters and text translation of biblical, Targumic and liturgical Aramaic.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
Two very different people search for an Aramaic translator. One is an attorney with an Assyrian client from the Nineveh Plain whose asylum interview is next month. The other wants a verse from the Peshitta checked before it is tattooed or carved into a headstone. We take both, and we assign them to different linguists, because a scholar of Syriac and a Sureth-speaking interpreter from Iraq are not interchangeable. Our office is in New York and our Aramaic linguists are spread thin across the country, so most interpreting runs by phone or video, and we say so before you book.
Aramaic in the United States means the modern languages of Christian and Jewish communities from Iraq, Iran, Syria and southeastern Turkey, and they are not one language. Assyrian Sureth and Chaldean Neo-Aramaic sit close enough that their interpreters cover each other. Turoyo, spoken by Syriac Orthodox families from Tur Abdin, is a separate language, and the Western Neo-Aramaic of the Maaloula villages is different again. The Turoyo community has a foothold in New Jersey, and Jewish Neo-Aramaic speakers from northwestern Iran settled around New York; the larger Assyrian and Chaldean populations came from Iraq.
Ask the church before you ask the country. A family's denomination and home village tell us which Aramaic they speak faster than a passport does. Younger speakers mostly manage in English or Arabic; the interpreter is for the grandmother, the recent arrival from the Nineveh Plain, or the witness who reaches for Sureth when the questions get hard.
No state certifies court interpreters in any Aramaic language, and Aramaic is squarely the kind of rare language courts come to Prism for after the usual providers have said no. A judge appoints a qualified Aramaic interpreter and makes a finding on the record, and we tell the court in advance whether the interpreter is a Sureth, Chaldean or Turoyo speaker so that finding is an informed one. Immigration court is the bulk of it, with family and probate matters behind. We work for courts, attorneys and law firms directly; we are a private agency, not a court-appointed vendor.
A hospital that takes federal funds owes an Aramaic-speaking patient an interpreter at no cost, and the usual shortcut, an Arabic interpreter for an elderly Chaldean from Iraq, is a shortcut the patient did not choose. Many older Assyrian and Chaldean patients have working Arabic and no wish to use it in a conversation about their own body. Video suits a consultation or a medication review. For a serious diagnosis or hospice planning we look for an Aramaic interpreter in person and tell you plainly how far away the nearest one is.
Asylum claims from the Nineveh Plain and from Syria turn on what happened in a particular village in a particular year, and the officer is listening for consistency with the written declaration. An Aramaic interpreter who explains a place name, rounds off a date or softens an account of violence has altered the testimony. We brief every interpreter to render exactly what is said and to match the speaker's variety, because an asylum interview is not the place to be guessing at a Turoyo word from a Sureth vocabulary. We never seat a relative or a parish friend as the interpreter.
A USCIS file from an Aramaic-speaking family rarely contains a civil certificate in Aramaic; the birth and marriage records are Iraqi, Iranian, Syrian or Turkish and come in Arabic, Persian or Turkish. What arrives in Aramaic is the church paperwork that proves the relationship or the persecution: a baptism or marriage entry, a letter from a priest, a family memoir, a recorded interview. The script identifies the community before the words do. Assyrian and Chaldean records are in East Syriac letters, Syriac Orthodox records from Tur Abdin in Serto, and Turoyo written abroad often in Latin letters. We translate the Aramaic record in full beside the Arabic or Persian certificate it supports, with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy on each.
Classical Aramaic is a different order. A passage from the Targums, the Peshitta, the Aramaic chapters of Daniel and Ezra, a Talmudic line or a liturgical text goes to a translator who works in those texts, and comes back as a text translation with a note on the source edition and the reading chosen, not as a certified civil document. If you are checking a phrase before it is engraved, say so; we will tell you where the manuscripts disagree. 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 Aramaic interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Aramaic 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 Aramaic assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.