Asylum, immigration court and hospital interpreting across the US in the language the person thinks in, plus certified translation of French-language records from Cote d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso.
Prism Linguistics provides Diula (Dioula, Jula) interpreters for USCIS asylum interviews, immigration court hearings, attorney meetings and medical appointments anywhere in the United States, in person, by phone or by video, together with certified English translation of the French-language civil records and the Diula-language statements, letters and recordings that those cases depend on.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
Diula is a language most US agencies have never heard of and a growing number of asylum attorneys now need. The speakers come from northern Côte d'Ivoire and western Burkina Faso, many have arrived in the last few years, and they settle in the Bronx, Harlem, Philadelphia and a handful of other West African neighborhoods where the older Ivorian community is Francophone and cannot always help. A Diula booking is almost always an immigration booking. Our office is in New York and our Diula interpreters are few, so we assign in person where one is near and by phone or video everywhere else.
French is not a substitute. The papers from Côte d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso are in French, so a caseworker sees a Francophone file and books a French interpreter, and the applicant then tells the most important story of their life in a language learned at a market stall. Diula is the trade language of the region, picked up in commerce rather than school, and a speaker's French runs anywhere from fluent to nothing. We ask which language the person dreams in, and that is the one we send.
Diula sits inside the Manding family with Bambara and Maninka, and the three are close enough that a Bambara speaker can handle a clinic visit. They are not close enough for an asylum interview, where the case is the village name, the date of the attack and what exactly the men at the roadblock said. For that we send a Diula interpreter and ask whether the speaker uses the everyday vehicular Diula of Bouaké and Bobo-Dioulasso or the older Kong variety.
Since September 2023 an affirmative asylum applicant has had to bring their own interpreter to the USCIS interview, at least 18, fluent in English and Diula, and neither the attorney, a witness nor a relative; turning up without one can be recorded as a failure to appear. This is where most of our Diula work sits. Claims from Burkina Faso's north and from Côte d'Ivoire are built from specifics that a neighboring variety, or a nervous cousin, will blur: the name of a hamlet, which month the school closed, who arrived on motorbikes. We brief every interpreter to render the answer as given, silence included.
Immigration courts keep staff interpreters mainly in Spanish and contract for a language like Diula hearing by hearing, so the court supplies its own interpreter on the day and the attorney is left to prepare the client without one. That preparation is the private demand: an interpreter at the law office for the declaration, at the merits-hearing rehearsal, and on the phone when the client calls about a notice. No state certifies court interpreters in Diula, and a qualified one is what any court will use. We are a private agency, not a court-appointed vendor.
Medical bookings follow the asylum caseload: intake physicals at resettlement clinics, prenatal care, and the psychological evaluations that support a claim, where the clinician needs the person's own words and a French-speaking relative is the wrong bridge. A federally funded hospital must provide a Diula interpreter at no cost, and most do not know the language exists until a patient names it. Video and phone carry most of this work well; for a forensic evaluation we send someone in person where we can.
A Diula file is two translation jobs stapled together. The civil records are in French and come from the mairie or the sous-préfecture: the extrait d'acte de naissance, the copie intégrale, marriage and death extracts, and in a striking number of cases a jugement supplétif, the court order that replaces a birth certificate when the birth was never declared in time. The jugement is the document officers question, because it is dated years after the birth it records, so we translate the court, the date and the stated grounds exactly and add a note saying what the document is. The second job is the Diula material, which is almost never official: voice messages from family, letters from an imam or a village chief, and the applicant's own declaration first told in Diula and written down in French by somebody else.
Names are French on paper and Diula out loud. Coulibaly, Ouattara and Koné are colonial spellings that a Diula speaker pronounces quite differently, and the passport spelling is the one we use throughout, with a note where a document differs. Every item carries a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy. 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 Diula interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Diula 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 Diula assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.