For the elderly speaker whose Italian has faded back to the village, and for the Italian civil records a Sicilian family holds, anywhere in the US.
Prism Linguistics arranges Sicilian interpreters for the uncommon deposition, guardianship hearing or medical appointment where an older speaker needs one, in person, by phone or by video anywhere in the United States, and provides certified English translation of the Italian civil records that Sicilian families carry.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
Almost nobody calls us for a Sicilian interpreter, and when the call comes the person who needs one is usually old. Sicilian is a real Romance language, not a rough form of Italian, but it was never the language of the schoolroom or the registry office. Anyone taught in an Italian classroom in the last several decades answers in Italian, so a younger Sicilian American who needs any help at all needs an Italian linguist. From our New York office we send someone near the courthouse or the clinic for in-person work, and connect by phone or video when the schedule is tight.
The map for this language is not a map of Sicily. Italian emigration to the United States crested a century ago, and the fluent Sicilian speakers here now are the oldest members of families that settled in New York, New Jersey and the industrial Midwest. UNESCO treats the language as vulnerable, and the reason it reaches us at all is that an elderly person under stress drops back into the speech of the village rather than the Italian of the television news.
Book Italian first, then check. At intake we ask whether the speaker truly needs a Sicilian interpreter or whether Italian will carry the appointment. Sending the wrong one loses the slot and rattles an old person who is already anxious, so the question is worth the ten seconds it takes.
A Sicilian court interpreter belongs to a particular kind of hearing: a guardianship or capacity case, an elder-abuse matter, a deposition where an aged immigrant is the witness, or a probate fight that turns on what a grandparent once said. No state gives a certification exam in Sicilian, so a court works from a qualified interpreter, and in practice that is often an Italian court interpreter who was raised speaking Sicilian at home. We tell the judge and the attorneys which credential the person actually holds and where Sicilian stops and Italian starts. Recorded calls and old letters in Sicilian, put forward as evidence, come to us for transcription and translation as well. Prism takes this work from courts and law firms directly, and we are a private agency rather than a court-appointed vendor.
In a hospital the real hazard is the willing bilingual relative. A grandson with kitchen Sicilian gets handed the job of explaining a diagnosis or a consent form, and the fine distinctions that decide a treatment quietly go missing. Any hospital or clinic that takes federal money has to provide a Sicilian interpreter at no charge to the patient, and most families are never told this is their right. Video is enough for a specialist review or a consent talk. For a mental-health assessment, a discharge plan, or a frail patient who does better with a person in the room, we send an interpreter in person.
Most Sicilian interpreting does not need a body in the room. A recorded-statement review, a lawyer's intake call with an elderly client, a short clinic visit: these run well over the phone or by video, and because the pool of speakers is small and aging, remote is often the fastest way to reach one at all. We keep the in-person interpreter for the courtroom and the bedside, where being there changes the result, and use phone and video for everything else. Tell us the setting and we say honestly which mode fits it.
A Sicilian family's paperwork is, in practice, Italian paperwork. The birth record is an estratto per riassunto dell'atto di nascita or a copia integrale from the comune's civil registry in Palermo, Catania or some town up in the interior, and it reaches us for USCIS filings, for probate that needs a grandparent's record read into a US file, and for dual-citizenship claims running back toward Italy. The Sicilian part is the hand and the names. Older certificates from a small comune were written out by hand, and a family may know a man as Turiddu when the record says Salvatore. We translate the Italian in full, copy the handwritten entries, spell every name to the passport, flag any variant on the original, and deliver 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 Sicilian interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Sicilian 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 Sicilian assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.