Asante Twi interpreters for the green card interview, the witness stand and the consulting room, and certified translation of the Twi-language papers behind a Ghanaian file.
Prism Linguistics provides Ashante interpreters, the Asante Twi of Kumasi and the Ashanti Region, for USCIS 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 the Ashante-language sworn statements, church records, letters and customary marriage accounts that support Ghanaian immigration and court cases.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
Ashante is what a booking form says when the speaker is from Kumasi. Linguists call it Asante Twi, the largest dialect of Akan and one of its three written standards, spoken by more than 3.8 million people in the Ashanti Region and by Ghanaians across the United States. The name matters less than the match: an interpreter who grew up in Kumasi follows the dense, proverb-laden speech of an Ashanti elder in a way a coastal Fante speaker does not. Our office is in New York and our Ashante interpreters are based across the country, so in-person work gets a linguist near you and a phone or video call is usually connected the same day.
The Ghanaian who needs an Ashante interpreter is seldom the one who booked the appointment. Working-age Ghanaians run their lives in English; it is the mother who arrived last year, the spouse at a green card interview, or the patient who managed fine until the diagnosis was serious who switches to Twi and needs someone who can follow. That shapes the assignment: we send an interpreter comfortable with an older, formal register, not just a fluent young speaker.
Ashante covers most Twi speakers, with one caution. Asante Twi, Akuapem Twi and Fante understand one another in conversation, so an Ashante interpreter will usually serve an Akuapem speaker without difficulty and a Fante speaker with care. We still ask where in Ghana the person is from, because the vocabulary of a trader in Accra and an elder in Kumasi differ, and under cross-examination the difference is not academic.
There is no state certification exam for Ashante, Twi or Akan court interpreters, so the court appoints a registered or otherwise qualified interpreter and the judge rules on the record. A witness from Kumasi answers in proverbs and indirect speech, and an interpreter who flattens that into short English sentences has stripped out the meaning the witness intended; ours render it and let the attorney ask the follow-up. Tell us the court, the case type and the speaker's hometown and we confirm what that bench will accept. We work for courts, attorneys and law firms directly, and we are a private agency, not a court-appointed vendor.
Any provider that takes federal funding must supply an Ashante interpreter at no cost to the patient, and the adult child who translates for a parent will, with the best intentions, leave out the part that frightens. Video is fine for a routine consultation or a medication review. For a cancer diagnosis, a consent discussion before surgery, or an older patient who does better with a person in the room, we send an in-person Ashante interpreter where one is within reach and tell you plainly when the nearest one is not.
Marriage-based green card interviews are the most common Ashante USCIS assignment, and they are the ones where a helpful interpreter does the most damage. The officer asks the spouse a question and wants that spouse's answer, not an improved version with the missing detail supplied. We brief every Ashante interpreter to render the answer as given, hesitation included, and we do not seat a relative, a pastor or a church friend as the interpreter at an interview.
Ghana issues its certificates in English, so an Ashante translation is almost never a birth certificate or a Ghana Card. It is the evidence around them: a sworn statement taken from a grandmother in Kumasi in Asante Twi, a church record with Twi entries, a family head's letter confirming who is related to whom, an account of a customary marriage, or a recording from a family dispute. We translate every line and every handwritten entry, and each piece carries a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy. Spelling is where a careless translator does harm. Printed Asante Twi follows the common Akan orthography agreed in 1978, but a handwritten statement keeps older Ashante spellings, and a translator trained on the Akuapem Twi Bible will quietly normalise them so the translation no longer matches the original a USCIS officer is holding. We keep the spelling as written. Names get the same treatment: day names such as Kwabena, Yaw, Abena and Akua, a family name used only in Ghana, and a passport that orders them differently are all matched to the passport with every variant noted. 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 Ashante interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Ashante 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 Ashante assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.