Asylum, immigration court and hospital interpreting for Tama speakers from Chad and Darfur, usually by phone or video, plus certified translation of French and Arabic records.
Prism Linguistics provides Tama interpreters for asylum interviews, immigration court hearings and medical appointments across the United States, usually by phone or by video, and certified English translation of the French and Arabic records that Tama speakers from eastern Chad and Darfur carry.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
Almost every Tama booking we take is an asylum matter. The speaker is from Dar Tama in the Wadi Fira region of Chad, or from across the border in Darfur, and has reached the United States by way of a camp or a long journey. Our office is in New York and our linguists work nationwide, but Tama is rare enough here that most assignments run by phone or video rather than in person. Tell us the setting and we say plainly who is available before you book.
Tama is not a language of government on either side of the Chad border, so the temptation is to book Arabic and move on. Roughly six in ten people in Chad use Chadian Arabic as a trade language, and Tama men who dealt in markets often manage in it, which makes an Arabic interpreter look fine at a first intake. It is not fine for a woman or an older man recounting what happened in a village, and an asylum case stands or falls on that account being heard in full.
Confirm the home area first. The neighboring Taman languages, Mararit and Miisiirii, are separate tongues rather than dialects of Tama, and a speaker labeled simply as Tama at registration may in fact use one of them. We check where a person is from before assigning, and where the speaker prefers Arabic for an official setting we arrange that instead. Courts reach us for rare languages that other agencies cannot cover, and this is one of them.
At the asylum interview the officer is testing a credible, consistent account, and the interpreter is the only path the applicant's words take to reach it. An interpreter who tidies a hesitant answer, or renders a rough Arabic paraphrase instead of the Tama that was spoken, changes the story on the record. We brief every Tama interpreter to carry each answer across as given and to flag rather than fill a gap. For a woman describing violence we can assign a female interpreter where one is available, which often decides whether the account comes out at all.
Removal proceedings, bond hearings and merits hearings all turn on the same problem: no US state runs a certification exam in Tama, so the court works from a qualified interpreter, most often on the court's telephone or video line. Give us the hearing type and the court and we arrange a Tama interpreter who can hold up under an attorney's questioning rather than a general Arabic speaker pressed into the role. Prism is a private agency and sits on no court's roster of appointed vendors, and we tell clients that at the outset.
Because in-person Tama interpreters are scarce, the phone and the video line do most of the work, and for many Tama assignments that is not a compromise but the honest option. A clinic intake, an attorney meeting, a credible-fear call from detention: all of these run well remotely. We connect a Tama speaker on short notice, and we say in advance whether the person assigned is a native Tama speaker or the nearest speaker of a closely related tongue, so nobody discovers the limit mid-appointment.
A Tama family often holds no birth certificate at all, because civil registration in that part of Chad is thin and much of it happens only through the courts. Where a birth was never declared, the record is a jugement suppletif, a supplementary judgment from the tribunal of the birthplace standing in for the certificate, and that is the French document USCIS needs translated. A Sudanese file instead carries Arabic certificates from the Civil Registry, and many families hold only a UNHCR registration card from the camps of eastern Chad. We translate what exists, in the language it is actually in, and where nothing exists we translate the sworn statement that replaces it, spelling each name to the travel document. 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 Tama interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Tama 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 Tama assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.