Nobiin and Kenzi-Dongolawi interpreting for asylum interviews, courts and hospitals across the US, plus certified translation of the Arabic civil records Nubian families carry.
Prism Linguistics provides Nubian interpreters, in Nobiin or Kenzi-Dongolawi, for asylum interviews, immigration hearings and medical appointments anywhere in the United States, together with certified English translation of the Arabic civil records that Nubian families from Egypt and Sudan actually carry.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
Nubian is not one language, and the first job on any booking is to settle which one. Nobiin and Kenzi-Dongolawi are separate tongues that their speakers cannot simply switch between, so we ask where in the Nile valley the family comes from before anyone is assigned. Our office is in New York and the interpreter works from wherever suits the case. In-person Nubian linguists are scarce in the United States, so most assignments run by phone or video, and we arrange them quickly.
Nobiin is spoken in southern Egypt and by the Mahas and Halfawi communities of northern Sudan; Kenzi in Egypt and Dongolawi in Sudan form a second language under two names, with fewer speakers, and the two are not something a speaker of the other can follow. Nearly every Nubian also uses Arabic, so a younger, working-age applicant is often served perfectly well by an Arabic interpreter. The person who genuinely needs Nubian is an older relative, or an asylum applicant whose account of home turns on places and events told best in the mother tongue.
Say the region, not just Nubian. A great deal rides on the resettlement history. When the Aswan High Dam flooded the old Nubian homeland in the 1960s, tens of thousands of Egyptian Nubians were moved to new villages near Kom Ombo, so one family's papers and testimony can name both a drowned village and the place they were resettled to. An interpreter blind to that history can lose the thread of an asylum narrative.
Asylum is where the choice of Nubian language matters most. An officer weighs the exact words, the pauses and any contradiction, and a Nubian applicant recounting displacement, detention or the loss of a village needs an interpreter who renders what is said and adds nothing. We brief every interpreter to carry the account faithfully, and we never seat a bilingual relative in that chair. Where the applicant is more precise in Nubian than in Arabic, that is the language we send.
No state runs a certification exam in any Nubian language, so a court that needs Nobiin or Dongolawi relies on a qualified interpreter, and it is often us that a court turns to for one. Tell us the court and the matter and we confirm what that bench will accept. We take the work from courts and attorneys directly, as a private agency and not a court-appointed vendor.
Any hospital that receives federal funds has to supply a Nubian interpreter at no cost, and many families never learn this. In an emergency room a Nubian-speaking elder is too easily left to an Arabic-speaking relative who softens or shortens what the doctor says. Video covers a consultation or a consent conversation well. For a mental health assessment or discharge planning we prefer someone present, where the small pool of Nubian interpreters allows it.
Almost every document in a Nubian file is in Arabic, not Nubian, because neither Egypt nor Sudan registers births in a Nubian language. The Egyptian file holds a computerised birth certificate and national ID card from the Civil Status Department; a Sudanese one, from families around Wadi Halfa or Dongola, holds a certificate issued by the national Civil Registry. We translate the Arabic record in full, spell each name to the passport, and read the place names for the history they carry, since a resettlement village and a drowned one can both appear on the page. Any statement a family has written in Nubian is translated alongside it. The wider 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 Nubian interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Nubian 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 Nubian assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.