Asylum, court, hospital and naturalization interpreting for Ugandan families across the US, booked only after we know the speaker actually uses Luganda at home.
Prism Linguistics provides Luganda interpreters for asylum interviews, court hearings, depositions, medical appointments and naturalization interviews anywhere in the United States, in person, by phone or by video, together with certified English translation of the Luganda affidavits, elders' letters, statements and messages that support a USCIS filing.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
Luganda is the language of Kampala and the Buganda kingdom, and it follows Ugandans wherever they settle: Waltham outside Boston, which locals call Little Kampala, then New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Chicago. Most of the people in those communities will never need us. The ones who do are the elders, the newly arrived relatives, and the asylum applicants with a story that only comes out straight in Luganda. Our office is in New York; our Luganda interpreters are assigned near the job for in-person work and by phone or video for everything else.
Every Ugandan went to school in English, and that fact decides who calls for a Luganda interpreter. A nurse from Kampala manages her own hearing. Her mother, brought over on a family petition, does not, and neither does a young man at an asylum office trying to describe under questioning what happened to him in Uganda. Those two people are the whole of Luganda interpreting in the United States: family reunification and asylum, with hospital visits alongside.
Ugandan is a nationality, not a language. Luganda is the country's largest indigenous language and the trade language of the center, but Uganda has around forty languages, and a family from Mbarara or Gulu speaks Runyankole or Acholi at home and may hold Luganda loosely or not at all. Booking a Luganda interpreter for a northern elder is a common and expensive mistake. We ask which language the person uses in the kitchen, not which country they are from, and we assign on the answer.
Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023 has driven a wave of asylum claims that turn on the most private detail a person can be asked to give, and the interpreter in that room is being judged by the applicant as much as by the officer. Discretion is part of the credential. So is neutrality: an interpreter who softens an answer or fills a pause has altered the record the officer will test the written statement against. We brief every Luganda interpreter on both, we do not send anyone the applicant knows, and we match gender where the attorney asks.
There is no certified Luganda court interpreter anywhere in the United States, because no state has built an oral exam for the language. Courts appoint a qualified interpreter instead, sworn for the matter, and when the local roster has nobody they call an agency that can find one. That is how courts have come to use us for Luganda. We take assignments from courts, attorneys and law firms for hearings, depositions and family matters, in person where a Luganda linguist is based within reach and by video where the court allows it. We are a private agency, not a court-appointed vendor.
The Luganda patient is almost always a parent or grandparent, and the appointment is the kind where detail matters: a diabetes review, a cancer consultation, a psychiatric assessment. A hospital that takes federal funding must provide a Luganda interpreter at no cost, but many book nothing because the daughter said she would translate. She rounds off the bad news. We supply Luganda medical interpreters by video for routine consultations and in person for discharge planning and mental health work, and we will tell a family plainly that the hospital should have arranged this for free.
Ugandan civil records do not need translating. Birth certificates from NIRA, older ones from the Uganda Registration Services Bureau, marriage certificates and court orders are all in English, and USCIS wants an English original left alone. What needs a Luganda translator is everything written by a person rather than a registry: a sworn affidavit from an uncle in Masaka confirming a birth registered thirty years late, a letter from clan elders, a personal statement drafted in Luganda for an asylum claim, a newspaper cutting, and the message threads submitted as evidence. We translate these in full, mark every switch between Luganda and English, and deliver a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy.
Names need a note of their own. A Muganda child takes a clan name that says nothing about the parents, so a birth certificate can show three surnames for one household, and a translator who aligns them to make the family look tidy has created a discrepancy for the officer to find. We reproduce every name as printed, spell to the passport, and add a translator's note on the naming system. 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 Luganda interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Luganda 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 Luganda assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.