Aramaic Translation Services

Aramaic is not one language and an Aramaic order is not one job. Prism Language Solutions handles classical and liturgical Aramaic as scholarly text translation, with a note on the edition and the reading chosen, and the modern Neo-Aramaic languages as certified document work with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy. Tell us what the text is and roughly when it was written and the right linguist is obvious within the hour.

Last reviewed September 12, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Language Solutions

Two callers use the same word for very different work. A university press editor wants a Syriac colophon read. A paralegal wants a baptism certificate from a family that left Iraq in 2015. Neither is wrong to say Aramaic, and neither should be sent to the other’s linguist. A specialist in Targumic Aramaic may be unable to follow a handwritten letter in modern Sureth, and a Neo-Aramaic speaker from Urmia is not the person to check a Peshitta variant.

• 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

Which Aramaic: Modern Varieties on a Translation Order

The modern Aramaic languages are separate languages, not accents. Assyrian Neo-Aramaic and Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, both called Sureth by their speakers, come from northern Iraq and northwestern Iran and sit close enough that one translator commonly covers both. Turoyo, spoken by Syriac Orthodox families from Tur Abdin in southeastern Turkey, is a different language and needs its own. Western Neo-Aramaic survives in the Qalamoun villages north of Damascus, Maaloula, Jubb’adin and the now largely emptied Bakh’a, and is critically endangered after the Syrian war scattered its speakers. Jewish Neo-Aramaic varieties from Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan are a fourth group again, and their remaining speakers are mostly in Israel.

Practical consequence for anyone arranging a job: name the community, not the language. Church, home village and country settle an Aramaic assignment in one line. The Iraq-facing work has its own pages at Assyrian translation and Chaldean translation.

Classical Syriac and Biblical Aramaic Text Translation

This is academic work and we price and deliver it as such. Biblical Aramaic covers a limited and well-mapped body of text: the long section of Daniel from 2:4b to the end of chapter 7, two blocks in Ezra, a single verse in Jeremiah 10 and two words in Genesis 31. The Targums, Onkelos on the Torah and Jonathan on the Prophets, are a separate tradition, and the Aramaic of the Babylonian Talmud is a third. Classical Syriac carries the largest literature of all, from the Peshitta through the Church Fathers, homilies, chronicles and liturgy.

A translation of any of these comes back with the source edition named, variant readings flagged where the manuscripts differ, and a transliteration where you need one. It does not come back with a Certificate of Translation Accuracy, because that certificate is a statement about a document in a filing and this is not one. Publishers, seminaries, museums and parishes are the usual clients; the service itself is described at document translation.

Aramaic Script Choice on a Syriac Translation or Setting

Syriac is written in three scripts and the choice is not decorative. Estrangela is the oldest and is what most editions of early texts use. Madnhaya, the East Syriac hand, belongs to the Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church. Serto, the West Syriac hand, belongs to the Syriac Orthodox and Maronite traditions. A parish that receives its text in the wrong hand has received a text from someone else’s church.

So we ask which script before anything is set, and for material going into stone, metal or print we supply the line in the script you name with a transliteration beside it. Modern Turoyo written abroad often appears in Latin letters instead, a community convention rather than an error, and we reproduce what the writer used.

Certified Aramaic Translation of Church Records and Letters

Where Aramaic does enter an immigration or court file it is almost never a civil certificate. Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran issued those in Arabic, Turkish or Persian, and that half of the file goes to a translator in the issuing language; see Arabic translation. What arrives in Aramaic is the material a family kept for itself.

8 CFR 103.2(b)(3) applies to these in the ordinary way: a complete English translation, certified. We identify the script and the variety in the translator’s note, because that identification is often what tells an officer which community the applicant belongs to, and in a religious persecution claim that is the substance rather than the background.

• Baptism, marriage and membership entries from a parish register
• Letters from a priest or bishop describing a family’s flight or losses
• Handwritten family correspondence, notebooks and memoirs
• Recordings and voice messages offered as evidence, transcribed and translated side by side

Aramaic Translation of a Phrase for Engraving or Memorial Work

Short-phrase requests are a real part of Aramaic demand and they deserve a straight answer rather than a stock one. Someone wants a line from the Peshitta, a liturgical phrase or a name rendered for a headstone, a chalice, a church fitting or a tattoo. We treat that as text translation: the phrase in the script you choose, a transliteration, the source it comes from, and a plain statement where the wording differs between manuscripts or between the Syriac and a familiar English rendering.

The caution worth paying for is this one. A phrase pulled from an image search is very often a modern back-translation, sometimes in the wrong script and occasionally not Aramaic at all. Send us what you have and we will tell you what it actually says before it is cut into anything.

Aramaic and Syriac Translation Cost and Turnaround

Modern Neo-Aramaic documents follow ordinary certified pricing, from around $24.95 for a short certified page as a US market guide, usually inside a business day. Classical and liturgical work is quoted per project rather than per page, because the reading and the apparatus are the labor and a difficult colophon can take longer than twenty pages of modern text. Short-phrase and inscription work is quoted as a small fixed job. Figures are set out on the pricing page. Spoken Aramaic bookings run through court interpreting and medical interpreting.

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