Interpreting for families from Gagauzia at asylum interviews, hearings and hospital visits nationwide, and certified translation of the mixed-language Moldovan paperwork behind them.
Prism Linguistics provides Gagauz interpreters for asylum interviews, court hearings, USCIS appointments and medical visits anywhere in the United States, in person, by phone or by video, and certified English translation of the Russian, Romanian and Gagauz documents that make up a file from Gagauzia in Moldova.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
Nobody searches for a Gagauz interpreter by accident. The call comes from an asylum attorney whose client answered in Gagauz and was met with a Romanian interpreter who could not follow, or from a court that has exhausted its list. Rare languages are what courts use us for, and Gagauz is about as rare as they come. Our office is in New York; our linguists are wherever the hearing or clinic is, so an in-person job goes to someone based near you and a video or phone booking is usually filled within the day.
Gagauz is a Turkic language of roughly 115,000 people, nearly all of them in the autonomous region of Gagauzia in southern Moldova, around Comrat. A Moldovan passport tells an intake clerk to book Romanian, and for a Gagauz speaker that is frequently the worst of the three available choices. Surveys in the region put Russian fluency near 96 percent and Romanian near 12, with Gagauz itself the daily language of a little over half the population. So the practical rule is: Russian covers most appointments, Romanian covers almost none, and Gagauz is for the cases where the exact words matter.
When Russian is not enough. An elderly villager who thinks in Gagauz, an asylum applicant describing what happened to them in the language it happened in, a patient reaching for the word for a symptom: these are the bookings where we send a Gagauz interpreter rather than a Russian one. Turkish interpreters are sometimes offered as a workaround because the languages are close. They manage the grammar and stumble on the Russian and Bulgarian loanwords that fill everyday Gagauz speech, which is a poor bargain in testimony.
Asylum and immigration court work is the largest share of our Gagauz interpreting. The applicant's credibility rests on consistency between the written declaration and what is said in the room, and an interpreter who tidies an answer, or who silently switches the applicant into Russian because it is easier, has changed the account. We brief every Gagauz interpreter to render exactly what is said and nothing else, hesitations included, and to flag rather than guess at a word. For the asylum office interview and later for the immigration judge, we try to place the same interpreter.
No state runs a certification exam in Gagauz, so a court that needs one works from a qualified interpreter it can vet, and that is the kind of assignment that reaches a rare-language agency. Tell us the court, the county and the case type and we confirm in advance what the bench will accept, then send a Gagauz interpreter who is also fluent in Russian, because a Moldovan witness switches between the two mid-sentence. We work for courts, attorneys and law firms directly. We are a private agency, not a court-appointed vendor.
Any hospital or clinic that receives federal funding must supply a Gagauz interpreter at no cost to the patient. In practice a Russian interpreter is offered, and for a younger patient that works. For an older woman from a Gagauz village describing pain, or in a psychiatric assessment where the idiom is the evidence, we send a Gagauz speaker, in person where the patient does better with someone in the room and by video where speed matters more. The relative who has been interpreting so far usually leaves out the frightening part.
A Gagauz translation order is a three-language job in a single envelope. Gagauz was only given a written standard in 1957, in Cyrillic, and switched to a Turkish-style Latin alphabet in 1996; no civil registry ever used it. So a birth or marriage certificate from Gagauzia is in Russian if it was issued in the Soviet years and in Romanian if issued since, the newer ones by Moldova's Public Services Agency, which can also supply a multilingual extract. The apostille comes from the Ministry of Justice and increasingly as a signed electronic PDF, which we translate as part of the document. Gagauz itself appears in the parts of the file people write themselves: statements, letters from relatives, and above all names. One surname, three spellings. The same family name sits in Russian Cyrillic on an old certificate, in Romanian Latin on a new one, and in Gagauz Latin in the family's own hand, and an adjudicator reads that as three people. We match the passport, note each variant on the translation, and sign a Certificate of Translation Accuracy for every document. The service is described 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 Gagauz interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Gagauz 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 Gagauz assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.