USCIS, court and medical interpreting across the US for families from Hunza, Nagar and Yasin, usually by phone or video, and certified translation of the Urdu records they hold.
Prism Linguistics provides Burushaski interpreters for USCIS interviews, court hearings and medical appointments anywhere in the United States, usually by phone or video and matched to the Hunza-Nagar or Yasin variety, together with certified English translation of the Urdu Union Council and NADRA records that families from Gilgit-Baltistan actually hold.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
Burushaski is a language isolate: it is related to nothing else on earth, which is a nice fact for a linguist and a practical problem for a court clerk trying to find an interpreter. Roughly 130,000 people speak it in the valleys of Gilgit-Baltistan, and the number in the United States is small enough that we do not pretend to have someone in every city. Our office is in New York; a Burushaski interpreter joins by phone or video from wherever they are. What we can promise is that we ask the one question that matters before we assign: which valley.
Hunza and Nagar Burushaski are close enough that one interpreter covers both. Yasin Burushaski, spoken by about a quarter of all speakers, is a different matter; Hunza speakers struggle to follow it, and an interpreter from Karimabad sent to a Yasin witness will be guessing. So a booking that says only Burushaski is not finished until we know the valley.
Urdu will often do. Not always. Almost every Burushaski speaker also speaks Urdu, and a working-age applicant from Hunza usually manages an appointment in it. An elderly parent does not, and a witness giving detailed evidence loses precision when every answer passes through Urdu on its way to English. We say which case you have, and book Urdu when that is the honest answer.
Family-based petitions and naturalization interviews for older relatives are the typical Burushaski USCIS work. The applicant may bring an interpreter, and families bring a son who speaks Urdu fluently and Burushaski as a home language he has not used for questioning about dates and addresses. Our interpreter renders each answer directly from Burushaski, in the applicant's own variety, without an Urdu relay in the middle, and adds nothing.
No US state certifies court interpreters in Burushaski, so a judge who needs one uses a qualified interpreter, connected by phone or video. This is the sort of language that brings a court to us after its roster and the larger agencies have come up empty. Tell us the court, the case type and whether the speaker is from Hunza, Nagar or Yasin, and we confirm the interpreter before the hearing. Prism is a private agency, and no court has appointed us as a vendor.
The patient is usually a parent visiting family, and the family has been interpreting for them until a diagnosis makes that unfair on everyone. A hospital that takes federal funding must provide an interpreter at no cost; an Urdu interpreter meets that duty for some patients and not for an elderly speaker from a Yasin village. Phone works for a follow-up call; video is better for a consent conversation or discharge planning, and it reaches any ward in the country the same day.
Nobody holds a Burushaski birth certificate. The language had no agreed script until a standard for all its dialects was approved in 2023, and civil records in Gilgit-Baltistan were always written in Urdu. So a certified Burushaski translation is a certified Urdu translation for a Burushaski family: a computerized birth certificate from the local Union Council, a NADRA Family Registration Certificate, a CNIC, and for an older birth a handwritten Union Council register entry. NADRA forms are bilingual, but USCIS still expects every Urdu field rendered in full. The recurring problem is the name, written in Urdu letters by a clerk in Hunza and romanized again on the passport, seldom the same way twice. We translate the whole record, keep the issuing office as printed, spell to the passport and note the variant. The service, with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy, 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 Burushaski interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Burushaski 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 a Burushaski assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.