Asylum, immigration court and hospital interpreting in the Arabic of Mauritania and the Sahara, sent as Hassaniyya rather than Modern Standard Arabic, with certified translation of the records and statements behind the case.
Prism Linguistics provides Hassaniyya interpreters for credible fear interviews, asylum hearings, immigration court and medical appointments anywhere in the United States, by phone, video or in person, together with certified English translation of the Arabic and French civil records and sworn statements that Mauritanian and Sahrawi applicants file.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
Most people who need a Hassaniyya interpreter have been offered an Arabic one instead. The booking said Arabic, the agency sent a Levantine or Egyptian speaker, and half an hour into a credible fear interview everyone in the room realised the applicant and the interpreter were talking past each other. Our office is in New York and our Hassaniyya linguists are reached by phone and video from anywhere in the country, with in-person work arranged where a hearing requires it. The first thing we establish is not the country on the file but the language the person actually grew up speaking.
Demand for Hassaniyya interpreting in the United States rose sharply from 2023, when thousands of Mauritanians crossed the southern border and settled in numbers around Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio, alongside older communities in the New York area. Most of them are asylum applicants, and asylum is decided on the fine grain of a story: dates, names of villages, who did what to whom. A Modern Standard Arabic interpreter catches the shape of that account and drops the grain. That is the gap a Hassaniyya interpreter closes.
Mauritanian does not mean Hassaniyya. Mauritania is also home to Pulaar, Soninke and Wolof speakers, and the people persecuted there are disproportionately from those communities, so a Mauritanian applicant may need a Pulaar interpreter rather than a Hassaniyya one. Sahrawi applicants from Western Sahara and the Tindouf camps are Hassaniyya speakers who often hold no national civil record at all. We ask the language and the region at intake, then assign a linguist who grew up in that speech rather than one who studied Arabic at a university.
The credible fear interview is where most Hassaniyya requests start and where the poorest interpreting has been documented. Advocates and members of Congress raised the problem publicly in 2023 and 2024 after Mauritanians in detention were interviewed through interpreters who could not follow them. An asylum officer weighs hesitation, contradiction and exact wording, so an interpreter who paraphrases in Standard Arabic is quietly rewriting the testimony. We brief every Hassaniyya interpreter to render each answer as spoken and to flag, not smooth over, anything they did not catch.
No state runs a court certification exam in Hassaniyya, so immigration judges and state courts proceed with a qualified interpreter, and Hassaniyya is the sort of rare language that courts have come to Prism for when their contracted provider could not supply it. Tell us the court, the hearing type and the date, and we confirm a named linguist and whether the judge will take video. Attorneys also book us for client preparation, where a Hassaniyya interpreter often surfaces details a previous Arabic session missed. We are a private agency rather than a court-appointed vendor.
Clinics near the Ohio and New York communities now see Hassaniyya-speaking patients regularly, and any provider that takes federal funding must supply an interpreter at no cost to the patient. Video usually covers a consultation or a prenatal visit well. For a mental health assessment, which many asylum applicants are referred for, we prefer an interpreter who shares the speaker's background, because trauma histories told in Hassaniyya do not survive translation through a second dialect.
Hassaniyya is rarely written, so a Hassaniyya translation job is really an Arabic and French job with a Hassaniyya ear. Mauritanian civil records come from the ANRPTS in Arabic and French, and we translate both faces of the document rather than one. Many applicants have no certificate at all, and the file is built from substitutes: sworn declarations, attestations from family or tribal elders, and the voice notes and letters in Hassaniyya that document a persecution claim. Those recordings need a translator who hears the dialect, not a reader of Standard Arabic. Names are where filings stumble: Ould and Mint in the French version, an Arabic patronymic in the other, and a third spelling written by ear at the border. We match the passport or the immigration record and list every variant on the certificate. See certified translation for the document service.
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 Hassaniyya interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Hassaniyya 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 Hassaniyya assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.