Sango for Central African families in asylum and resettlement, usually by phone or video, with French as the honest alternative and certified translation of the French and UNHCR papers.
Prism Linguistics provides Sangho interpreters for asylum interviews, refugee medical screenings and court hearings anywhere in the United States, usually by phone or video, together with certified English translation of the French civil records and UNHCR papers that Central African families actually hold.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
Almost everyone who calls us for a Sangho interpreter is somewhere in the refugee and asylum process out of the Central African Republic. Sangho, also written Sango, is the country's lingua franca, a first language for a few hundred thousand people and a second language for several million, so one Sangho interpreter reaches most Central Africans whatever their home tongue. The state itself works in French, which means the paperwork and the fallback language are both French. Our office is in New York; because in-person Sangho speakers are scarce here, most of this work runs by phone or video, and we say so at the booking.
The demand pattern is narrow and worth naming. Sangho work in the United States is refugee medical screening, school enrollment, the asylum interview and, later, the naturalization interview, rather than commercial or conference assignments. Educated speakers from Bangui will often switch to French for anything formal; children and older relatives from the interior usually cannot, and a French interpreter on their own will lose them. So we ask whether the speaker also uses French before we decide how to staff the job.
No state runs a court certification exam in Sangho, so a court works from a qualified interpreter, and in practice that is usually by phone or video, because in-person Sangho speakers are thin on the ground. This is one of the rare languages courts come to us for. When a case needs French instead, we can staff that too, but we do not quietly substitute it for a speaker who needs the Sangho.
The asylum interview is the assignment with the least room for error. The officer weighs the applicant's exact account and the way it holds up, so an interpreter who rounds off an answer or fills a silence changes the record. We brief every Sangho interpreter to render what is said and nothing more, and to flag when a French word is standing in for something the speaker would rather put in Sangho. A relative should never be the interpreter here.
Refugee medical screening is often the first appointment a newly arrived family faces, and it goes badly when the interpreter is a French speaker the older members only half follow. Any provider taking federal funds must supply a professional interpreter at no cost. Most of this happens by video, which handles a screening or a follow-up well enough. For a serious diagnosis or a mental health assessment we push for an in-person Sangho interpreter wherever one can be reached.
Court work in Sangho is mostly the immigration side: the removal hearing behind an asylum claim, the occasional family matter. Give us the court and the case and we arrange a qualified Sangho interpreter, by phone or video where no one is close enough to attend, with French as a backup only when the speaker genuinely works in it. We act for attorneys and courts directly and hold no court appointment.
The honest starting point is that most Sangho speakers hold French documents, if they hold any at all. The Central African state issues the acte de naissance, the marriage record and the school certificate in French, so the certified translation USCIS needs is usually French to English. Many families have no civil records: a 2018 study found a birth certificate was the exception for much of the younger population in Bangui and Berbérati, and with 162 of the country's 182 magistrates sitting in Bangui, the jugement supplétif that replaces a missing birth record has to be obtained there.
In practice the documents a resettled family carries are UNHCR papers rather than civil records: a refugee certificate, a camp registration card, a vaccination card, and an affidavit of birth sworn in French or Sangho. We translate every piece, label what each document is, and set the names to the travel document. A Sangho translator takes the parts written in Sangho; the rest is French to English. 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 Sangho interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Sangho 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 Sangho assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.