Asylum, court and hospital interpreting across the US by interpreters who grew up with Sudan's Arabic, plus certified translation of the records that survived the war.
Prism Linguistics provides Sudanese Arabic interpreters for asylum interviews, immigration court, hearings, depositions and medical appointments anywhere in the United States, in person, by phone or by video, matched to the speaker's region of Sudan, together with certified English translation of Sudanese birth certificates, national number certificates, marriage contracts and affidavits for USCIS.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
A booking that just says Arabic will usually bring an Egyptian or Levantine interpreter to a Sudanese speaker. That works at the pharmacy and fails at the asylum office. We assign Sudanese Arabic interpreters by name and ask which part of Sudan the person comes from. Our office is in New York; the interpreters are spread across the country, and for an in-person job we send one based near you. Phone and video can usually be connected the same day.
Sudanese communities in the US grew around refugee resettlement long before the 2023 war, with sizable populations in Omaha, Des Moines, the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, Dallas and Phoenix, and the war has since pushed more than eleven million people out of their homes. The people who need a Sudanese Arabic interpreter today are asylum applicants who arrived through Egypt, Chad or Uganda and older relatives who never learned English.
Sudanese Arabic is a family of dialects, not one. Khartoum speech, the Arabic of Darfur and Kordofan, and the Juba Arabic of South Sudan are far enough apart that a Khartoum interpreter can lose a Darfuri witness in the details. Many people from Darfur speak Fur, Zaghawa or Masalit first and learned Arabic in the camps, so we discuss at intake whether a Sudanese Arabic interpreter is the right choice or whether the first language should be found.
State court certification exams test Arabic in general, not Sudanese Arabic, so a certified Arabic interpreter on a court roster may never have worked with a Sudanese speaker. We tell the court which is on offer: a Sudanese-born interpreter holding the certification that state requires, or, where none is within reach, a qualified Sudanese Arabic interpreter the judge can question on the record. Courts come to us when the roster has run out, which for Sudanese Arabic is often. We work directly with courts, attorneys and law firms, and we are a private agency rather than a court-appointed vendor.
Hospitals default to whatever Arabic interpreter the phone line supplies, and a Yemeni or Egyptian voice on the line will follow a Sudanese patient through a blood pressure check and lose them at a cancer diagnosis. Any provider that takes federal funding owes the patient an interpreter at no charge, and resettled families are seldom told. We send Sudanese Arabic interpreters in person for discharge planning, obstetric care and mental health work, and by video for follow-up visits. A cousin who softens the diagnosis is not an interpreter.
Since April 2023 the asylum interview is where most of our Sudanese Arabic interpreting happens. An applicant from El Geneina or Nyala describes an attack in village words and place names an interpreter from Cairo has never heard, and each guess becomes an inconsistency in the officer's notes. We match the interpreter to the region, brief them to render exactly what is said, hesitations and all, and never use a relative. The same rule holds in immigration court and at a credible fear screening.
Sudanese civil records are written in Modern Standard Arabic, so what makes the translation Sudanese is knowing the paperwork. A birth certificate from the Ministry of Interior may rest on a hospital notice or, for a home birth, on a midwife's note and a letter from the Neighborhood Committee; the same word, shahada, covers a birth certificate, a school leaving certificate and the National Number certificate, and the translator has to say which one is in hand. A late registration rests on a sworn affidavit, which we title as an affidavit.
Many originals no longer exist. The National Records Office in Khartoum was overrun and damaged early in the war, so a file often consists of a phone photo, a UNHCR registration card from Chad or Egypt, and an affidavit reconstructing what was lost. We translate every legible field, mark what is not, and spell names to the passport, because Sudanese romanization writes Elfadil and Elsadig where the Gulf style writes Al-Fadil and Al-Sadiq. 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 Sudanese Arabic interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Sudanese Arabic 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 Sudanese Arabic assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.