Sureth-speaking interpreters for court, asylum and hospital work across the US, matched to the family's village, plus certified translation of Iraqi civil and church records.
Prism Linguistics supplies Chaldean (Sureth) interpreters for asylum interviews, immigration court, depositions and hospital appointments across the United States, in person, by phone or by video, and certified English translation of the Arabic-language Iraqi civil records and Syriac-script church documents a Chaldean family holds.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
Chaldean is the language of Iraq's Catholic minority, and in the United States it belongs to one of the most concentrated immigrant communities anywhere: metro Detroit first, San Diego County second. Almost every provider who receives a booking for it sends an Arabic interpreter and hopes. We do not. Our office is in New York, our Chaldean interpreters are based where the community is, and for phone or video the connection is usually the same day.
Community organizations count well over a hundred thousand Chaldeans across Oakland and Macomb counties in Michigan, with Sterling Heights, Warren and the northern suburbs of Detroit at the center, and a second community of tens of thousands in El Cajon and the east of San Diego County. Speakers call the language Sureth. Linguists call it Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, the Aramaic of the Nineveh Plain villages: Tel Keppe, Alqosh, Batnaya, Karamles.
Arabic is not a safe default. A Chaldean raised in Baghdad often speaks Arabic as easily as Sureth and will accept either. An elder from a village north of Mosul, or a grandmother who left after the 2014 ISIS advance emptied the Nineveh Plain, may have only school Arabic, and will answer a doctor or an asylum officer in a second language without telling anyone. We ask the family's village and parish, then send a Sureth speaker, and we use Arabic only when the speaker asks for it.
The June 2017 immigration arrests of Iraqi nationals in metro Detroit put Chaldeans with decades-old removal orders back in front of immigration judges, and those cases, alongside criminal and family matters in Oakland and Macomb county courts, are where Chaldean court interpreting happens. No state offers a certification exam in the language, so a judge relies on a qualified interpreter, usually through an agency. We supply Chaldean interpreters to courts and to attorneys for depositions. We are a private agency, not a court-appointed vendor, and Chaldean is one of the rare languages courts come to us for.
The patient is almost always a parent or grandparent. The US-born generation speaks English, the Baghdad generation manages in Arabic, and the villagers of the Nineveh Plain, now in their sixties and seventies, need Sureth in the exam room. A federally funded hospital in Michigan or California owes that patient a Chaldean interpreter at no cost, and putting an Arabic-speaking staff member in front of them does not meet the duty. Video is fine for a follow-up. For a cancer diagnosis, a consent conversation or hospice planning we send someone in person rather than let a grandchild soften the news.
Chaldean asylum and refugee claims rest on religion: what happened to the family's church, who delivered the threat, which militia or which checkpoint. An asylum officer weighs the exact words, and an interpreter who summarizes an elder's account or supplies the name of a town the applicant did not say can undo a credible claim. We brief every Chaldean interpreter for USCIS work to render and add nothing, and we match the village variety so the applicant is not straining to follow the interpreter's Sureth.
Very little arrives written in Chaldean. Iraq kept its civil records in Arabic, so a Chaldean family's file is an Arabic file: the birth certificate, the Civil Status ID, the Nationality Certificate or the newer unified National Card, and a passport whose Latin spelling of the name rarely matches the parish's. What is written in Syriac script is the church record, a baptism or marriage certificate from a Chaldean Catholic parish in Iraq or from the dioceses in Michigan and California, and USCIS asks for that when a civil marriage was never registered or the civil record was lost in the 2014 displacement. We translate both halves under one order, Arabic and Syriac, keep the issuing authority and the religion field exactly as printed, and spell every name to the passport with the variants noted. Older Iraqi records are often faded, torn or handwritten; we translate what is legible and mark what is not rather than guess. The work comes with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy, and the full 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 Chaldean interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Chaldean 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 Chaldean assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.