Neapolitan interpreters for the elderly Campanian speaker Italian cannot fully serve, plus certified translation of Italian civil records for USCIS and citizenship claims.
Prism Linguistics provides Neapolitan interpreters for the rare occasion an older speaker from Campania needs one, for court, medical and USCIS settings anywhere in the United States, together with certified English translation of the Italian civil records that Neapolitan-speaking families hold.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
Neapolitan is the language of Naples and the wider Campania region, spoken by millions and listed by UNESCO as vulnerable, and it reaches us mostly through heritage. The callers are families tracing an Italian citizenship claim, or the relatives of an elderly emigrant who left Campania long ago. The honest starting point is that almost every Neapolitan speaker also speaks Italian, so we will tell you when an Italian interpreter is the sensible choice. Our office is in New York, and our linguists work wherever the appointment or the hearing sits.
Italian for nearly everything, Neapolitan for the exception. We would rather send an Italian interpreter and say so than charge for a rarer service the case does not need. The exception is genuine, though. An older emigrant whose schooling was in Italian but whose home language was always Neapolitan may answer, under stress or in illness, in the dialect they think in, and an interpreter trained only on standard Italian from the north will lose words. For that person we assign an Italian interpreter raised with Neapolitan, and we ask which part of Campania they come from.
No state runs a court certification exam in Neapolitan; a court works from a qualified Italian interpreter, and from one raised with Neapolitan where a witness needs it. Most Campanian speakers give evidence perfectly well in Italian, so we do not push Neapolitan where it adds nothing. When a witness genuinely falls back into dialect under questioning, we match an interpreter who follows both. Tell us the court and the matter, and Prism arranges it as a private agency, not as a court-appointed vendor.
Illness and age are where Neapolitan stops being optional. An elderly patient from Campania, tired or frightened, often drops out of school Italian and back into the dialect of childhood, and a standard Italian interpreter can miss the specifics of a symptom or a history. Any hospital taking federal funds must provide an interpreter the patient can actually follow, at no cost. For a routine visit Italian is usually fine; for a mental health assessment or an anxious older patient, we send someone who understands Neapolitan into the room.
Neapolitan at USCIS is uncommon, since most applicants interview comfortably in Italian, and much of the Campanian document work is really about Italian citizenship rather than a US interview. Where an older applicant does need Neapolitan, we place an interpreter raised with it and brief them to render the answer as given, not translate it first into tidy Italian. We keep bilingual relatives out of the interpreting role, whatever the setting.
A Neapolitan translation is, on the page, an Italian one. No comune ever issued a birth record in Neapolitan, so what an attorney or applicant brings is the estratto per riassunto dell'atto di nascita or the copia integrale from the ufficio di stato civile of the comune, a marriage extract, and often a grandparent's death record for a citizenship line. Neapolitan surfaces in the old handwritten registers, where a nineteenth-century clerk spelled a given name or a place as it was spoken. We translate the Italian in full, render any Neapolitan form as written with a translator's note, and spell names to the passport, signing the work with a Certificate of Translation Accuracy. The full 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 Neapolitan interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Neapolitan 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 Neapolitan assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.