Court, deposition, hospital and USCIS interpreting nationwide, with a check for Kurdish speakers, and certified Turkish document translation.
Prism Linguistics provides Turkish interpreters for depositions, medical appointments, court hearings and USCIS interviews anywhere in the United States, in person, by phone and by video, and certified English translation of Turkish civil registry extracts, diplomas and court decisions.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
The first thing to settle with a Turkish booking is whether Turkish is really the language the person wants to use. Plenty of people from Türkiye speak Kurmanji Kurdish or Zazaki at home and Turkish only for work, and an asylum interview is no place to lean on the second one. Our office is in New York; the interpreter we assign lives near the appointment. Ask the person which language they want to give evidence in, tell us, and we book that, not the one that happens to be on the file.
The Census Bureau's 2023 survey counted about 250,000 people of Turkish ancestry in the United States, concentrated in the Northeast, California and Florida, with Paterson and the rest of northern New Jersey the densest pocket. The Turkish speakers who actually need an interpreter are mostly recent arrivals and the visiting parents of settled families; the engineers and doctors who make up much of the community rarely do.
Being from Türkiye does not always mean speaking Turkish first. Kurmanji is the first language of most Kurds from Türkiye, and a person can handle Turkish in a shop and still lose the thread in a credible-fear interview about why they left. Ask which language they want, and if the answer is Kurmanji or Zazaki, we send that. It is the single most useful question at intake for a Turkish case, and it costs nothing to ask.
Turkish is one of about twenty languages that the National Center for State Courts has built an oral exam for, which means a certified Turkish court interpreter is available in the states that run it, Maryland and Virginia included. California, by contrast, treats Turkish as a registered rather than a certified language. What a given bench accepts varies, so give us the court, the state and the case type and we confirm before you book. Much of this work is a divorce or custody matter with Turkish court decisions behind it, and we serve the courts and attorneys directly, as a private agency and not a name on any court's appointed-vendor list.
A federally funded hospital must provide a Turkish interpreter at no charge, and the patient who needs one is usually a visiting parent or a recent arrival rather than the settled professional. Video suits a consult or a consent conversation. We send someone in person for discharge planning, a mental health assessment, or when the family wants a face in the room. Where the patient is Kurdish, we check first whether Turkish or Kurmanji is the right language for the visit.
At USCIS we send a neutral Turkish interpreter briefed to add nothing and soften nothing, because that is exactly what the officer is listening for. The most important check happens before the interpreter is even chosen: if the applicant is Kurdish and the appointment is an asylum or credible-fear interview, we ask whether they would rather testify in Kurmanji or Zazaki, and book accordingly.
Türkiye does not issue a birth certificate the way the US does. Instead, a Turkish applicant hands USCIS a civil registry extract, the nüfus kayıt örneği, either issued over the counter by the Population Directorate or pulled with a barcode from the e-Devlet portal, plus the identity booklet or chip card. The extract sets out the entire family record in a table, the parents and siblings, every marriage, divorce and name change, and the province, district and village of registration, and USCIS wants the lot in English, though it does not require an apostille on the Turkish original. We translate every line, including the registrars' shorthand, since a column an officer cannot read means the document comes straight back. Turkish spelling is the other recurring trap. A US clerk drops the marks that Turkish depends on, the dotless ı and the cedillas and breve on ş, ç and ğ, so a surname printed Şahin or Çağlar in Türkiye turns into Sahin or Caglar here, which is also how the passport renders it; we spell to the passport and record the Turkish original beside it. Diplomas for credential evaluation and Turkish court decisions in divorce and custody cases make up most of the rest. Each translation carries a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy, and the full service is at Turkish translation services.
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 Turkish interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Turkish 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 Turkish assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.