Arabic Translation Services

Prism Language Solutions translates Arabic documents into English and English documents into Arabic for use in the United States. Most of it is certified: civil registry extracts and family booklets from Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Sudan, court and police records, school and university papers, each delivered as a full English translation with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy. A one-page certificate normally comes back inside 24 hours; handwritten records take longer.

Last reviewed September 11, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Language Solutions

Written Arabic is one language across twenty-odd countries, which sounds like it should make this easy. It does not. Every ministry lays its certificates out its own way, much of what reaches us was filled in by hand, and the part that decides whether a filing goes smoothly is the name rather than the content. We ask which country issued the paper first, because a Syrian civil registry extract, an Iraqi shahadat wilada and an Egyptian computerized certificate are three different reading problems.

• Certified translations prepared to meet USCIS requirements
• Human linguists only, matched to the subject
• Fixed written quote within 60 minutes in business hours
• One office in New York, linguists in every state

Certified Arabic Translation for USCIS

The document set changes by country and we ask which one before quoting. Egypt issues a bilingual Arabic and English certificate through the Civil Status Organization, and applicants sometimes assume the English side removes the need for a translation. It does not: the printed English is abbreviated, the stamps and registrar's entries are Arabic only, and USCIS wants the whole face rendered. Syrians normally hold a civil registry extract and a family booklet rather than a single certificate. Iraqi records are often handwritten and carry the registry number, the parents' full names and, on older forms, religion or tribe. Yemeni and Sudanese papers vary by governorate.

Every field, stamp, marginal note and anything on the reverse is translated, and the issuing authority keeps the name it prints rather than an American equivalent. Format details are on the certified translation page and the document set on the USCIS translation page.

• Birth certificates, civil registry extracts and family booklets
• Marriage contracts and divorce documents, including talaq registrations and court decrees
• Police and criminal record certificates
• National identity cards, passports and residence permits
• Medical records and vaccination cards for the immigration medical

Arabic Name Transliteration on a Certified Translation

This is the part that causes Requests for Evidence. Arabic script does not write short vowels, so one name reaches Latin letters as Mohammed, Muhammad, Mohamed or Mohammad, and a family can carry three of those across a passport, a birth record and a US driver’s license. None of them is wrong. They are transliterations, and the person did not choose them.

Name structure compounds it. Many Arabic names run given name, father, grandfather, then family name, sometimes with bin or ibn linking them, and a US form with a first and last box cannot hold four parts. Something gets dropped, and the dropped element is often the one the certificate uses. We transliterate to match the passport, show the full chain as the document prints it, and add a note where the variants differ rather than quietly choosing one.

Hijri Dates in Arabic Civil Document Translation

An Arabic document may date an event by the Hijri calendar, the Gregorian calendar, or both, and the two do not line up: the Hijri year is lunar and about eleven days shorter. Saudi records are calculated on the Hijri calendar, as the State Department reciprocity page for Saudi Arabia notes. A translator who converts a date silently has replaced evidence with arithmetic. We print the date as it appears and put the Gregorian equivalent in a note, so the officer can see which is which.

Arabic Legal Document Translation and Consular Legalization

Attorneys send us court judgments, powers of attorney, inheritance and guardianship rulings, marriage contracts being litigated, and police files. Sharia court documents need care, because the institutions behind them have no exact American twin. A wakala is not a US power of attorney, and a maintenance award made under a family code is not alimony as a New York judge would define it. The term stays, with a note explaining it, rather than being swapped for the nearest domestic word. See legal translation.

Authentication is a separate step and one worth checking early. Egypt, Syria and Iraq are not parties to the Hague Apostille Convention, so documents from those countries travel by consular legalization rather than apostille; Saudi Arabia and Morocco are parties. We translate the legalization stamps and apostilles as part of the document. Diplomas and transcripts follow the same path, with the degree names kept as issued: see diploma translation and apostille translation.

English to Arabic Translation and Right-to-Left Layout

Work in the other direction is mostly institutional: hospital consent forms, discharge instructions, school notices, benefit letters, HR and safety material. Two things matter. The register is Modern Standard Arabic, because a document written in Egyptian or Levantine speech reads as a transcript of a conversation and carries no authority. And the layout has to be rebuilt, not mirrored by a find-and-replace. Arabic runs right to left, so tables reverse, bullets and headers move, and numbers and English brand names stay left to right inside a right-to-left line.

Most of the damage we are asked to fix is typesetting rather than translation: letters that failed to join because the file was pasted into the wrong tool, a checkbox now sitting on the wrong side of its label. We deliver the finished layout, not just the text.

Arabic Translation Cost and Turnaround

Arabic sits in the middle of the price range. A one-page certified document is quoted per page, from around $24.95 in the US market, and running text per source word from roughly $0.12. Legibility moves the figure more than the language does: a clean Egyptian computerized certificate is quick, and a 1970s handwritten Iraqi registry entry has to be deciphered first, which we say in the quote rather than after. One or two pages come back inside 24 hours; court files take two to five business days. Ranges are on the pricing page.

Arabic Interpreters for Court, Asylum and Hospital Appointments

Interpreting is where dialect decides the outcome, so name the country when you book. An Iraqi witness, a Yemeni patient and a Sudanese asylum applicant are not interchangeable, and an interpreter outside their own variety will guess at everyday words without saying so. For a hearing, an asylum interview or a medical appointment, see Arabic interpreters, which covers dialect matching and court certification.

Questions we get asked