Mandarin, Cantonese or another variety as the speaker requires, for courts, hospitals and immigration interviews nationwide, plus certified Chinese translation.
Prism Linguistics provides Mandarin, Cantonese and other Chinese-language interpreters for court hearings, medical appointments and USCIS interviews anywhere in the United States, in person, by phone or by video, and certified English translation of Chinese documents in Simplified or Traditional characters.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
There is no such thing as a Chinese interpreter until you say which kind. Before we assign anyone we ask where the person or their family is from, because that answer decides the spoken variety, and it is the question a booking most often forgets. Our office is in New York; our interpreters work across the country. For an in-person hearing or appointment we send one based near you, and for phone or video we can usually connect the same day.
The 2019 Census survey counted about 3.4 million people speaking Chinese at home, the largest non-English language in the country after Spanish, most of them around the Bay Area, greater Los Angeles, New York, and the Seattle and Boston corridors. Almost none of the software engineers and graduate students in those metros will ever need us. Their parents will. A witness, a patient in her eighties, a spouse at an immigration window: those are the calls we take.
One script, several spoken languages. Mandarin serves most mainland and Taiwanese speakers, Cantonese covers Guangdong and Hong Kong, and older immigrants may still use only Toisanese, Fuzhounese, Hokkien, Shanghainese or Hakka at home. Booking a Chinese interpreter without naming the variety is the single most common mistake we see, and the fix costs nothing: ask the person where the family comes from. We settle that at intake before anyone is assigned.
The federal immigration courts employ staff interpreters in exactly two languages, Spanish and Mandarin, which means every Cantonese, Toisanese or Fuzhounese hearing depends on contractors like us. California is one of the states that certifies court interpreters in both Mandarin and Cantonese, and its 2025 workforce study ranks Mandarin the second most interpreted language in the state's courtrooms after Spanish. Tell us the court, the case type and the variety, and we assign the credential the judge will look for. We serve courts, attorneys and law firms directly; we are a private agency and not on any court's appointed-vendor list.
Any hospital that takes federal money must provide a Chinese interpreter at no charge, and too often a Cantonese-speaking grandparent instead arrives with a grandchild pressed into the job. A child should not be translating a cancer diagnosis or a consent form. Video suits a routine consult; we send someone in person for a difficult conversation, a mental health assessment, or an elderly patient who reads a screen poorly. The interpreter's task in the room is to be exact, not kind, because a relative who softens the news leaves the clinician working blind.
Naturalization interviews, adjustment-of-status appointments and asylum interviews make up most of this work, and the variety matters here as much as in court: a Fujianese asylum applicant is poorly served by a Mandarin-only interpreter. The officer wants the answer rendered, not improved. We brief the interpreter to add nothing, soften nothing and explain nothing, and we do not send a friend or relative in the interpreter's place.
Simplified or Traditional depends on the paper, not the person. Mainland records are printed in Simplified characters, while documents from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau come in Traditional, and the script only becomes a choice when we translate into Chinese. From the mainland we usually receive the notarial certificate (gongzheng shu), issued by a local notary public office to attest a birth, marriage, kinship, clean criminal record or degree, together with the household register (hukou). From Taiwan it is the Household Registration Transcript, now that a Taiwan birth certificate is no longer accepted on its own. Names are the recurring trap: one person may be spelled in Pinyin on a mainland passport, in Wade-Giles or a Cantonese romanization on an older Hong Kong record, and a third way on a US license. We spell to the passport, flag each variant, and render every seal and red stamp, because an untranslated seal draws a request for evidence. 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 Chinese interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Chinese 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 Chinese assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.