Cantonese and Taishanese interpreting across the US, assigned by where the speaker is actually from, with certified translation of Hong Kong and Guangdong records.
Prism Linguistics provides Yue Chinese interpreters, Cantonese or Taishanese as the speaker needs, for court hearings, medical appointments and USCIS interviews across the United States, in person, by phone or by video, together with certified English translation of the Hong Kong and Guangdong records that Yue-speaking families file.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
Yue is the branch of Chinese that most people call Cantonese, and Cantonese, the speech of Guangzhou and Hong Kong, is its best-known form. But Yue is bigger than Cantonese. It runs across Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong and Macau, about 85 million speakers in all, and it takes in Taishanese, which Cantonese speakers cannot fully follow. If you have looked at our Cantonese page, this is the same language and the same pool of interpreters, seen from one level up. Our office is in New York and the interpreter works from wherever the appointment is.
The question we ask first is which Yue. Both Cantonese and Taishanese are Yue, and in practice they are not mutually intelligible. Taishanese comes from the Siyi counties southwest of Guangzhou and was the language of most nineteenth-century emigration from Guangdong to North America, with about 3.9 million speakers at home on 2012 figures. Here it is the language of the oldest Chinatown families, and a Cantonese interpreter placed with a very elderly Taishanese patient will catch most of what is said and lose the rest. So we assign by place: Hong Kong, Guangzhou, or a Siyi county such as Taishan.
The Cantonese-speaking community here is large and settled, which is why this is not only a rare-language service, it is a high-volume one. Younger people often carry English and Mandarin both, and they call us for the formal settings: a hearing, a hospital admission, a USCIS interview. The people who most need the Yue interpreter are elderly Cantonese and Taishanese speakers, and any witness who reverts to dialect under pressure.
Cantonese is one of the languages with a National Center for State Courts oral exam, and California, Pennsylvania, Arkansas and Indiana certify Cantonese court interpreters. No state certifies Taishanese, so for a Taishanese speaker a court will usually accept a qualified interpreter once the need is explained. Tell us the court and where the speaker is from and we confirm which of those applies and what the bench will take. Prism works as a private agency and is not a court-appointed vendor.
A hospital that takes federal funds has to provide an interpreter in the Yue variety the patient actually speaks, at no cost, and that distinction matters: a Cantonese interpreter is not automatically right for a Taishanese grandmother. The usual failure is a relative who rounds a diagnosis off into something easier to hear. Video handles a consultation. For a diagnosis, a mental-health assessment, or discharge instructions an older patient has to follow alone, we look at sending someone in person, in the right variety.
Naturalization, adjustment-of-status and asylum interviews are steady work, and the officer weighs the exact answer given. An interpreter who tidies a hesitation or fills a silence hands the officer a different account than the applicant gave. We brief every Yue interpreter to render and nothing more, we match Cantonese or Taishanese to the speaker so nothing slips under pressure, and we never seat a bilingual relative in that chair.
Nobody writes an official document in spoken Yue, so on paper a Yue translation is a Chinese one. From Hong Kong the applicant brings a birth certificate, or a certified copy of the birth entry, from the Immigration Department's Births Registry; these are mostly bilingual already, so what is left is the Chinese-only parts, the chops and any handwritten amendment. From Guangdong or Guangxi it is the household register (hukou) and a notarial birth certificate issued by the local notary public office, written in Simplified characters. The Yue layer is the name. On a Hong Kong passport the surnames read Cheung, Wong and Leung; those same characters on a mainland cousin's hukou are romanized Zhang, Huang and Liang, and an older US record may keep a Taishanese spelling altogether. We read the characters, match the passport, note every variant and sign a 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 Yue interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Yue 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 Yue assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.