Medical, USCIS and court interpreting for Sylheti speakers from Bangladesh, matched to Sylhet rather than standard Bengali, with certified Bangla document translation.
Prism Linguistics provides Sylhetti interpreters for medical appointments, USCIS interviews and court hearings across the United States, in person, by phone or by video, and certified English translation of the Bangla-language birth certificates, Union Parishad records and kabin namas that families from Sylhet actually hold.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
Sylhetti is the language of the Sylhet region of Bangladesh, and though its speakers number in the millions, the community rooted here is modest and its ties run more to Britain than to the United States. The work we see is family, medical and the occasional USCIS interview. What matters at intake is a single question: which district is the family from? When the answer is Sylhet, we match a Sylhetti speaker rather than a standard Bengali one. Our office is in New York and the interpreter is assigned wherever the appointment is, in person nearby or by phone or video.
For a Sylhetti speaker, book a Sylhetti interpreter, not a Dhaka one. Sylhetti parts from standard Bengali in sound, vocabulary and grammar far enough that linguists describe the two as barely intelligible without prior exposure, and many treat Sylhetti as a language in its own right. In casual talk a Bengali interpreter from Dhaka keeps up. In a medical history, a protection interview or cross-examination the gaps open, and it is the elderly patient or the newly arrived spouse from a Sylhet village who pays for them.
So we assign by region. Ask us for Bengali and we will check whether the family is actually from Sylhet before sending anyone. Sylhetti is rare enough in American courts that no state examines interpreters in it; where a court wants a credentialed Bengali interpreter, we look for a Sylhetti speaker who holds that credential. We are a private agency, not a court-appointed vendor.
This is the bulk of Sylhetti interpreting: an older patient, or a recently arrived spouse, whose everyday English does not stretch to a diagnosis, a medication plan or a consent form. Any hospital or clinic funded through federal programs must provide the interpreter at no cost, which few families realize. Video works for a routine consult; for a hard diagnosis, a mental health assessment or a discharge with an elderly patient, we put a Sylhetti interpreter in the room.
Family-based interviews are the routine work, with the occasional protection claim behind them. The officer is weighing the applicant's own words, hesitations included, so an interpreter who smooths an answer or borrows standard Bengali for a word the speaker used differently alters the account. We tell the interpreter to render each answer as given and to add nothing, and we keep a bilingual relative out of the interpreter's seat.
Where a Sylhetti speaker is a witness or a party, the record has to hold what they actually said, and a Dhaka Bengali interpreter who follows the gist is not enough for testimony. With no certification exam in Sylhetti, we offer a qualified interpreter, and a Sylhetti speaker with a Bengali credential where the court asks for one. Give us the court, the case type and the date and we confirm what that bench will accept before you book.
In practice a Sylhetti translation is a Bangla translation done by someone who knows Sylhet. Sylhetti is rarely written, so every record a family brings, the BDRIS birth certificate with its 17-digit number, the older handwritten Union Parishad entry, the kabin nama registered by the kazi, is in Bangla. What is Sylhetti about the file is the names and places: a village written by ear on a 1990s register, differently on the reprint and differently again on the passport.
We render every version, note the differences, and spell each name to match the passport, so the officer is not left reconciling three spellings of one place. Each document is delivered with 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 Sylhetti interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Sylhetti 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 Sylhetti assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.