Assyrian Translation Services

Prism Language Solutions takes Assyrian files in two halves. The Syriac-script church records written in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic go to a Sureth translator; the Iraqi Arabic and Iranian Persian civil documents in the same envelope go to translators in those languages. Both halves come back under one order with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy on each document.

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

Assyrian is what speakers of Assyrian Neo-Aramaic call their language in English, and Sureth is what they call it among themselves. It runs as a dialect chain from the Nineveh Plain in northern Iraq across to Urmia in northwestern Iran. The 2020 Census counted roughly 119,000 people reporting Assyrian, Chaldean or Syriac ancestry, with Chicago the largest community and metro Detroit, Modesto, Turlock, El Cajon and Phoenix behind it.

• 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

Assyrian Neo-Aramaic and Sureth on a Translation Order

Sureth is a living language with a modern literature, and it descends from the Aramaic that Syriac literature was written in rather than being that language carried forward unchanged. The distinction matters on an order: a scholar who reads the Peshitta is not automatically a translator of a handwritten Sureth letter from Baghdad in 1997. The classical material and the other modern Aramaic languages are on the Aramaic translation page.

Inside Sureth the varieties understand each other. A speaker from Alqosh and one from an Urmia village follow each other through a hearing, though the borrowed vocabulary differs, Arabic on the Iraqi side and Persian on the Iranian. What is genuinely separate is Turoyo, the Aramaic of Syriac Orthodox families from Tur Abdin. Ask which church the family belongs to.

Iraqi and Iranian Civil Records in an Assyrian Translation File

Iraq has spent a decade replacing its paper identity documents. The biometric National Card has been issued since 2016, and the Ministry of Interior stopped issuing the Civil Status ID and the Nationality Certificate inside the country in 2024, the cutover set first at 1 March and then extended by a month. Families who left earlier still hold the old pair, so a translator has to recognize all three and name each for what it is.

Certified Assyrian Translation of Church of the East Records

This is where an Assyrian translator earns the fee. Baptism, chrismation, marriage and parish membership certificates from the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East come in East Syriac letters, from a parish in Iraq or Iran or from one of the dioceses established here. Many carry a second column in Arabic or English, added by whoever drew up the form.

We translate the Syriac and treat that second column as a separate item to report, not as a shortcut. The columns disagree more often than you would expect: a date by one calendar in the Syriac and another in the Arabic, a village spelled two ways. Those discrepancies belong in front of the attorney.

• Baptismal certificates where no civil birth record was registered or the register was destroyed
• Parish marriage entries supporting a spousal petition when the civil marriage went unrecorded
• Handwritten Sureth letters and recordings, transcribed and translated side by side

Assyrian Names and Spelling Variants on a Certified Translation

One man is Yousip in the parish register, Yusuf on his Iraqi card because Arabic was the language of the registry, and Joseph on his American paperwork. USCIS, reading the file cold, can see three people.

Our practice is fixed. The travel document controls how the name is written in the English translation, the source spelling is reproduced as it stands, and a note sets out the relationship with the script each came from named. We do not pick the version that looks tidiest. See immigration attorneys for how that works across a family set.

Assyrian Document Translation When the Iraqi Record Is Gone

A large share of Assyrian filings involve records that no longer exist. Registry offices across the Nineveh Plain were looted or burned, families left in 2014 with what they could carry, and a request to an Iraqi office from abroad can take a year and come back empty. The rule is 8 CFR 103.2(b)(2): where a required document is unavailable, secondary evidence and then affidavits may be offered, and the State Department Reciprocity Schedule for Iraq is what an officer consults on availability.

The translator's job here is description, not rescue. A parish register extract is translated as a parish register extract, and an affidavit sworn by an uncle present at the birth is translated as an affidavit, with the language it was given in identified. Presenting a church record as a civil certificate costs a family the benefit of the doubt they are owed.

Assyrian Interpreters for Asylum Interviews, Courts and Hospitals

Most Assyrian demand in the United States is spoken rather than written. An asylum account about a church in Mosul, a checkpoint, a brother who did not come back, told in Sureth with place names an Arabic interpreter would flatten, is where the language earns its own booking. No state certifies court interpreters in Assyrian, so a judge qualifies the interpreter on the record, and we say in advance which variety of Aramaic ours speaks. In a hospital the failure runs the other way: staff reach for an Arabic phone line because the patient is Iraqi, and a woman of seventy from an Urmia village has no Arabic at all. Booking detail for each setting sits at USCIS interview interpreting and medical interpreting.

Assyrian Translation Cost and Turnaround

A single church certificate is quoted as a short certified page, from around $24.95 as a US market guide, and normally comes back inside a business day. Handwritten Sureth takes longer, because reading it is the work rather than rendering it, and Sureth audio is quoted on running time. Where the bundle is mostly Arabic or Persian, we requote at those rates and the total falls. See the pricing page.

Questions we get asked