On-Site Interpreting
The interpreter attends in person. Best for hearings, depositions, medical appointments, and anything long or legally significant. See face-to-face interpreting.
Professional interpreters in 326 languages: on-site, by phone 24/7, or by video, anywhere in the United States.
Prism Linguistics provides interpreting services across the United States in 326 languages. On-site, telephone (24/7), video remote, conference, and ASL interpreters for courts, hospitals, police departments, and businesses. Telephone interpreting connects in minutes, on-site bookings are confirmed nationwide, and every quote comes back within 60 minutes during business hours.
Last reviewed August 24, 2026 by the Prism Linguistics editorial team
Interpreting is spoken-language work, live and unrepeatable. A deposition in Houston, an ER intake at 3am, a USCIS interview: none of them offers a second take, so the interpreter has to be right the first time. This page explains the delivery modes we offer, what each one costs as a market guide, and how to pick between them.
Tell us about your appointment through the quote form or call +1 (833) 282 8883. During business hours you will have a clear price within 60 minutes.
Most of our interpreter bookings come from organizations that can't afford a misunderstanding: federal and state courts, hospitals and health systems, police departments, school districts, and the attorneys and businesses that work alongside them. Many of those organizations also carry a legal duty to provide language access, under Title VI for recipients of federal funding and Section 1557 of the ACA for healthcare, so the interpreter isn't a courtesy. It's compliance.
The rest of our bookings are private: a client meeting an attorney, a family at a parent-teacher conference, a business closing a deal with a supplier in Sao Paulo. Same interpreters, same vetting, same discretion.
Interpreting is one half of what we do. The other half is written translation, and both sit on our services page, with every language listed in the A to Z directory.
Six ways to put an interpreter in the conversation. The right one depends on the setting, the notice you have, and how sensitive the discussion is.
The interpreter attends in person. Best for hearings, depositions, medical appointments, and anything long or legally significant. See face-to-face interpreting.
On-demand telephone interpreting in 326 languages, 24/7. Connects within minutes, which is why ER teams and after-hours help lines rely on it.
Video interpreting (VRI) adds the visual link a phone call can't give you. Useful for telehealth, remote hearings, and ASL, with no travel on anyone's part.
Simultaneous and whisper teams for multilingual events, with booths and equipment. Details under conference interpreting.
Private interpreting for personal matters: attorney meetings, medical appointments, weddings, real estate closings. Handled with the same vetting as our public-sector work.
ASL interpreters for hospitals, courts, employers, and events, on-site or over video, supporting ADA effective-communication obligations.
If you're unsure, start with the appointment itself. Length, sensitivity, and notice decide the mode more reliably than budget does, though the cost differences below are real.
| Mode | Typical cost basis | Lead time | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| On-site | Hourly, often with a two-hour minimum | Usually 24 to 48 hours in major metros | Hearings, depositions, medical appointments, sensitive conversations |
| Telephone | Per minute | Connects within minutes, 24/7 | Short calls, triage, front-desk conversations, after-hours needs |
| Video (VRI) | Per minute or per session | On demand or scheduled | Telehealth, remote hearings, ASL, multi-site meetings |
| Conference | Per day, per interpreter team | Booked weeks ahead, with equipment | Conferences, summits, shareholder and delegate events |
A rule of thumb we give clients: if the conversation would justify a signed record, put the interpreter in the room. If it would fit on a sticky note, the phone is fine.
Court work is unforgiving, and it goes to interpreters with courtroom experience: depositions, arraignments, immigration hearings before EOIR, and attorney-client conferences. Our legal interpreting services page covers court interpreters, qualifications, and how law firms book us.
Hospitals and clinics book us for outpatient visits, mental-health assessments, maternity care, and discharge planning, work that sits under Section 1557 language-access rules and Joint Commission communication standards. Interpreters in clinical settings follow HIPAA-aligned confidentiality practice. Details on our medical interpreting services page.
A custody interview at 2am needs an interpreter who is calm, precise, and background-checked. We supply police interpreting services for suspect and witness interviews, victim support, and community outreach.
And for companies: negotiations, factory audits, HR meetings, investor calls. Our business interpreting and translation services page covers corporate work, from a single meeting to a standing account.
Whoever you book with, us included, it's worth knowing what "qualified" means in the US market, because the answer changes with the setting. Federal courts certify interpreters through the federal court interpreter program; most state courts run their own certification exams; NAJIT sets professional standards for judiciary interpreting; and for ASL, RID certification is the recognized credential. Healthcare has its own national certification bodies for medical interpreters.
So the right question isn't "are you certified?" but "are you certified for this?" A conference interpreter with twenty years of booth experience may hold no court credential at all, and a court-certified interpreter may never have worked simultaneously in a booth.
Our interpreters are professionally qualified, background-checked, and matched to the setting; where the setting requires formal certification, we assign a linguist who holds it, and we can document qualifications for any booking on request. Ask any provider the same, and be wary of one who hesitates.
Searching for an interpreter near you usually surfaces a patchwork of local agencies, each covering a handful of languages. A nationwide network works differently: one booking desk, one vetting standard, and interpreters staffed in the metros where demand actually lives. We place on-site interpreters in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Miami, San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston, Atlanta, Seattle, and Phoenix, and telephone or video interpreting reaches everywhere else the same day.
Our office is at 100 Church Street in Manhattan, but the network is the point: a Mam interpreter for a Houston immigration hearing and a Korean interpreter for a Seattle deposition come through the same desk. See the locations page for the metros we serve.
Three steps, and only the first one is yours. Telephone interpreting skips the queue entirely.
Use the online quote form or call +1 (833) 282 8883. Tell us the language, the date and time, the location, and how you want the interpreter to appear: on-site, by phone, or by video.
We reply within 60 minutes during business hours with a clear price and any notes that matter for your setting, such as certification or HIPAA paperwork. Nothing is booked until you approve it.
We match the booking to a background-checked interpreter with experience of your setting and send confirmation with the details. Telephone interpreting skips the wait entirely and connects in minutes, 24/7.
Spanish leads US demand by a wide margin, and the rest tracks local demographics: Vietnamese and Mandarin in Houston and the Bay Area, Haitian Creole in South Florida, Arabic in metro Detroit, Tagalog on the West Coast. We also staff the languages most agencies can't, the ones a single asylum case can hinge on. The most requested languages have their own pages, and the full list of 326 lives in our languages directory.
There's no single rate card, because interpreting is priced per assignment. As a guide to the US market: on-site interpreting typically runs $45 to $95 per hour depending on the language and setting, usually with a two-hour minimum; telephone interpreting is billed by the minute; and conference work is priced per day, per interpreter team, plus equipment. Rare languages and certified courtroom work sit at the upper end.
Treat those figures as market guidance rather than a price list. Your quote confirms the exact price before anything is booked, and the quote is free, with a reply within 60 minutes during business hours. For a fuller breakdown of what drives language-services pricing, see our pricing guide.
Interpreting is spoken; translation is written. If it's a document you're dealing with, our translation services cover the same 326 languages, and certified translation handles anything USCIS, a court, or a university needs to accept.
The questions we answer most often before a booking is placed.
Tell us the language, the setting, and the date. You will have a clear price within 60 minutes during business hours, and telephone interpreting is available right now, 24/7.
Get a Free Quote Call +1 (833) 282 8883