Asylum, USCIS and hospital interpreting for Tigre speakers from Eritrea across the US, usually by phone or video, and certified translation of Eritrean records.
Prism Linguistics provides Tigre interpreters, kept strictly separate from Tigrinya, for asylum interviews, USCIS appointments, court hearings and medical visits anywhere in the United States, usually by phone or by video, and certified English translation of the Eritrean records that travel with those cases.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
The single most useful thing to get right about Tigre is that it is not Tigrinya. They are related Eritrean languages, not one language with two names, and confusing them is the commonest mistake made when a Tigre booking comes in. Tigre is spoken by roughly a million people in the western and northern lowlands of Eritrea and across the border in Sudan. Our office is in New York and our linguists work nationwide, but Tigre is rare enough here that most assignments run by phone or video rather than in person, and we say so plainly before you book.
Because Tigre and Tigrinya share the Ge'ez script and a slice of vocabulary, a booking clerk may treat them as interchangeable and send a Tigrinya interpreter to a Tigre speaker. That interpreter is guessing, and at an asylum interview a guess is what sinks a credible account. We book Tigre for a Tigre speaker, and we treat the two as separate assignments from the first call.
Arabic is often the speaker's own preference, not a shortcut. Many Tigre speakers also use Arabic, and those who passed through the camps of eastern Sudan often reach for it in an official setting, so we ask which language the speaker would rather give evidence in rather than deciding for them. A person from the Keren area may hold either Tigre or a neighboring lowland language, another reason to confirm before assigning. Courts and asylum offices come to us for languages this rare because few other agencies can supply them at all.
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. A Tigre applicant describing conscription, detention or flight through Sudan depends on the rendering being exact, and an interpreter who smooths a hesitant answer or quietly slips into Tigrinya changes the record. We brief every Tigre interpreter to carry each answer across as given and to flag a gap rather than fill it. Where a woman is recounting gender-based harm we can assign a female interpreter where one is available, by phone or video.
Naturalization and adjustment interviews are steady work, and the same rule holds as at the asylum office: the interpreter renders each answer as spoken and adds nothing. Eritrean names and place names transcribe from Ge'ez in more than one way, so the interpreter and the officer are often reconciling a name across a passport and a certificate as the interview runs. We assign an interpreter who can do that without inventing, and we never seat a bilingual relative in the interpreter's chair. Prism is a private agency and holds no appointment or vendor listing from any court or agency.
A Tigre-speaking patient, often older and recently arrived, is too easily left to a relative who softens a diagnosis or an Amharic or Tigrinya speaker who half-covers it. Any hospital or clinic that takes federal funding must supply a Tigre interpreter at no cost to the patient, and most families are never told this is their right. Because in-person Tigre interpreters are scarce, video carries most of this work well, for a consultation, a specialist review or a mental health assessment, and we say in advance whether a remote interpreter is the honest option for the visit.
Most Eritrean documents in a US filing are not in Tigre at all. Municipalities issue birth certificates in Tigrinya or English, and a first certificate is often built late from hospital records, a baptismal certificate and notarized witness statements, so a Tigre speaker's file is usually Tigrinya and English. That is why we keep Tigre and Tigrinya as separate translation assignments: the Tigrinya certificate goes to a Tigrinya translator, while a document actually written in Tigre, a family letter or a statement in Ge'ez or Arabic script, goes to a Tigre translator who reads the script and names which one it is. Each name is set to the passport spelling, with alternatives flagged. 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 Tigre interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Tigre 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 Tigre assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.