Court, hospital and phone or video interpreting across the US for Marshallese families, and certified translation of Marshall Islands records and of English notices into Marshallese.
Prism Linguistics provides Marshallese interpreters for court hearings and trials, hospital visits, school meetings and benefit appointments anywhere in the United States, in person, by phone or by video, together with certified translation of Republic of the Marshall Islands records into English and of consent forms and notices into Marshallese.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
Marshallese is the rare language with a shortage that judges have put on the record. Marshallese citizens live and work in the United States without visas under the Compact of Free Association, they have settled in a few very specific places, and the courts, hospitals and school districts there have spent a decade trying to find enough interpreters. Our office is in New York and our Marshallese interpreters are where the communities are, so for in-person work we assign one based near you and for phone or video we can usually connect the same day.
The map is unusual. The largest Marshallese community outside the islands is in Springdale and the surrounding towns of northwest Arkansas, more than 12,000 people drawn by poultry-plant work, and Hawaii counted close to 9,000 Marshallese in the 2020 Census. After those two come Spokane, Salem, Enid in Oklahoma, Dubuque, Orange County and the Kansas City area, communities that grew because a few families found work and the rest followed.
Dialect is not the problem; the pipeline is. Ralik in the western chain and Ratak in the eastern differ in some vocabulary, speakers follow each other without difficulty, and we ask the home atoll only when a case turns on exact wording. What makes a Marshallese assignment hard is supply. The pool of trained interpreters is small, the demand sits in a few counties, and a two-week trial in Benton County can absorb every interpreter in the state. We book early and say honestly when someone will be by video rather than in the room.
Marshallese has a national court-interpreter oral exam, Arkansas certified the first Marshallese court interpreter in the country in 2013, and by 2019 its courts were publicly recruiting again because trials need an interpreter present and northwest Arkansas was leaning on out-of-state interpreters by phone. Hawaii's judiciary rates Marshallese interpreters up to Tier 2. So a court may reasonably expect a tested interpreter, and we tell you at booking whether the person we can supply meets that standard or the judge will need to qualify them. We take assignments from courts, attorneys and law firms; Prism is a private agency, not a court-appointed vendor.
Marshallese patients carry high rates of diabetes and kidney disease, and much of the interpreting is repeat work: dialysis, prenatal care, diabetes education, a discharge briefing that will otherwise be reconstructed at home by a teenager. Any hospital or clinic that takes federal funding must supply a Marshallese interpreter at no cost, and since Medicaid eligibility was restored to COFA migrants in late 2020 more families are inside the system that owes them one. Video covers a routine visit. We send someone in person for a consent discussion, a mental health assessment or an elder who does not do well with a screen.
Because the interpreters are in Arkansas and Hawaii and the patients are increasingly in Iowa, Washington and Oklahoma, remote interpreting is how a great deal of Marshallese work gets done. It suits a school meeting, a benefits appointment, a follow-up call or a short court appearance. It does not suit a trial or a contested custody hearing, and we say so rather than sell it. We schedule remote sessions ahead where we can and keep the same interpreter across a series of appointments.
Marshallese translation runs in both directions, which is unusual for us. Into English, the documents are Republic of the Marshall Islands records from the Civil Registry Office under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, mostly in English already, alongside the Marshallese-language affidavits, customary adoption papers, land and lineage statements and church records that support a petition or a custody case. A person who registered a birth twice, decades apart, may hold two certificates that disagree; we translate each as it stands and note the discrepancy. Into Marshallese, the work is consent forms, discharge instructions, school letters and benefit notices.
Spelling changed in 2015, and both spellings are still in use. The Marshall Islands adopted a standard orthography with macrons, dots and cedillas, replacing the older missionary spelling, so a 1990s certificate and a 2020 one write the same name differently and a church in Springdale may still print in the old style. We reproduce the spelling on each original, match the person's name to the passport, and for outgoing notices write in the spelling the local community reads. Every translation carries a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy; 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 Marshallese interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Marshallese 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 Marshallese assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.