Asylum, court and hospital interpreting for Kabye speakers from northern Togo anywhere in the US, with certified translation of the French records in a Togolese file.
Prism Linguistics provides Kabye interpreters for asylum interviews, immigration court hearings and medical appointments anywhere in the United States, in person, by phone or by video, together with certified English translation of the French-language birth judgments, transcriptions and certificates that Kabye speakers from northern Togo bring to a USCIS filing.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
Kabye reaches us almost entirely through asylum work. The caller is usually an attorney or a legal aid office with a client from Kara or a village in northern Togo, and the first thing to settle is whether that client needs Kabye at all or would be better served in French. Our office is in New York. Our Kabye linguists work by phone and video across the country, and we arrange in-person assignments where a Kabye speaker can be placed near the hearing or the clinic.
Kabye is the second of Togo's two national languages, spoken by roughly a million people in the north of the country, and it is a minority language even at home: schooling, government and the civil registry all run in French. That shapes who needs a Kabye interpreter in the US. A man who finished lycee in Kara can usually get through a routine appointment in French. His mother cannot, and neither can a young woman who left school early, or anyone recounting events from a village where French was never spoken at the table.
Kabye or French? The answer decides the assignment. Send a French interpreter to a Kabye speaker and the appointment looks fine on the surface: questions get answered, nobody objects. The damage shows later, when a detail in the record turns out to be something the applicant half-heard and guessed at. We ask which language the person thinks in, not which one they can get by in, and we book on that basis.
Most Kabye interpreting in this country happens in front of an asylum officer or an immigration judge, and the account being given is one of arrest, family violence or persecution in the north. Credibility turns on detail. An interpreter who tidies a hesitant answer, or supplies a French word where the applicant used a Kabye one, has changed the testimony, and that is what we brief every Kabye interpreter against. Affirmative applicants have had to bring their own interpreter to the USCIS asylum interview since September 2023, so book weeks ahead rather than days.
No state offers a court certification exam in Kabye, and none is likely to. A court that needs one relies on a qualified Kabye interpreter, and Kabye is precisely the sort of rare language that brings a court to us after its own roster comes up empty. Immigration court is the usual venue, with the occasional state family or criminal matter involving a Togolese party. Tell us the court, the case type and the hearing date; we confirm whether an in-person Kabye interpreter can reach it or whether the judge will accept video. We are a private agency rather than a court-appointed vendor, and we say so plainly.
Any hospital or clinic that takes federal funds has to provide a Kabye interpreter at no cost to the patient, and Togolese families rarely know it. The typical request is an older parent with a chronic condition, a prenatal visit, or a psychological evaluation ordered as part of an asylum claim. Video handles most consultations. For a mental health assessment, where the evaluator needs the pauses as much as the words, we push for someone in the room wherever a Kabye speaker can be placed.
There is almost no such thing as a Kabye document. Togo registers births, marriages and deaths in French, so certified Kabye translation is nearly always French to English work on a northern Togo file, and that file has a shape of its own. Togolese law allows 45 days to declare a birth. A family in a Kabye village often misses the window, and the record that exists years later is a jugement supplétif from the tribunal de première instance, followed by a transcription into the civil registers of the birthplace. USCIS expects a birth certificate and receives a court judgment. We translate each document as what it is and attach a note showing how the judgment, the transcription and any later extract fit together. The Kabye layer is the name: the standard Kabye spelling uses letters French does not have, so a name can be written one way in the village and another on the passport. We follow the passport and record the variant. 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 Kabye interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Kabye 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 Kabye assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.