Romani, not Romanian: an interpreter matched to the family's dialect for asylum interviews, court and hospitals, with certified translation of the national-language civil records.
Prism Linguistics provides Romani interpreters for asylum interviews, court hearings and medical appointments anywhere in the United States, in person, by phone or by video, matched to the family's dialect, together with certified English translation of the Romanian, Hungarian and Slovak civil records that Roma families actually hold.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
The single most useful thing to settle before booking is that Romani is not Romanian. Romani is the language of the Roma, spread across many countries and many dialects; Romanian is the national language of just one of them. A Roma family from Romania, Hungary or Slovakia usually speaks Romani at home while holding documents in the national language of the country they left. We ask the country and the dialect group at intake and assign on that basis. Our office is in New York, and the interpreter works wherever the interview or the hearing is held.
Romani has no single standard and a wide spread of dialects, so the first question is always which Romani. In the United States the Vlax dialects are the most common, Kalderash and Machvaya among them, but a family from Slovakia or Hungary may speak a non-Vlax variety that a Vlax interpreter follows only in part. We ask the country the family left and the group they belong to before we assign anyone. The recurring failure we are called in to fix is a Romanian interpreter booked for a Romani speaker, or the reverse.
There is no reliable count of Romani speakers in the country. Roma have long kept clear of census takers, and estimates have run as high as a million people, with communities noted in Texas, Florida, California, the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast. Many Roma from Romania have arrived as asylum seekers at the southern border in recent years. No state runs a court certification exam in Romani, and it is the kind of rare language courts come to us for.
Asylum is the largest part of our Romani work. At the interview the officer weighs the applicant's own words and the way the account holds together, so an interpreter who tidies or shortens an answer hands the officer a different story than the one told. We brief every Romani interpreter to render what is said and to keep the pauses and the corrections. We match the dialect to the family, and we never seat a relative in the chair.
In court the pairing that goes wrong is Romani against Romanian, Hungarian or Slovak: a national-language interpreter booked because a clerk assumed the two were the same. Give us the country, the group and the case, and we assign a Romani interpreter in the right dialect, with a national-language interpreter as well when the documents call for one. We act for attorneys and courts directly and hold no court appointment. No state certifies court interpreters in Romani.
In a hospital a Roma patient is easily assumed to speak the language of the country on their passport and handed a Romanian or Hungarian speaker they only partly follow. Any provider taking federal funds must supply a professional interpreter in the patient's own language at no cost. Video suits a consultation or a review; for a diagnosis or a mental health assessment we prefer a person in the room, in the dialect the family actually uses.
The documents in a Roma file are almost never in Romani. A family from Romania holds a certificat de naştere from the local starea civilă, in Romanian; a family from Hungary a születési anyakönyvi kivonat from the anyakönyvi hivatal, in Hungarian; a family from Slovakia a rodný list from the matričný úrad. So the translation is usually Romanian, Hungarian or Slovak to English, and a Romani translator is needed only for a statement actually written in Romani.
The trap on these files is the name. A Roma applicant may carry an official Romanian or Hungarian name on the certificate and use a Romani name in daily life, and if the two are never reconciled the birth record and the asylum file read like two different people. We show the official name spelled to the passport, note the Romani name, and keep both consistent across the file. 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 Romani interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Romani 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 Romani assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.