Bubi Translation Services

Bubi, also written Bube, is the language of Bioko, the island where Malabo stands, and about 51,000 people were counted as speaking it there in 2011. Prism Language Solutions arranges Bubi interpreting, in practice by phone or video, and translates Bubi statements where any exist. Equatorial Guinea keeps its civil registry in Spanish, which makes this page unusual in our African list: the certified document work is a Spanish translation, not a Bubi one.

We are asked for Bubi a few times a year rather than a few times a week, and there is no point dressing that up. Very few Bubi speakers live in the United States, almost all requests are asylum or medical, and in-person coverage is the exception rather than the plan.

• 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

Bubi or Spanish: Choosing the Interpreter for a Bioko Applicant

If the applicant says Spanish is fine for the appointment, we book a Spanish interpreter, which is faster and cheaper to arrange, and tell you plainly that this is the better booking. We would rather lose the harder job than sell a scarce linguist nobody needs.

The cases where Bubi is worth the search are specific: the applicant asks for it, or the appointment is asylum testimony where the applicant’s own words are the evidence. Offer Bubi explicitly before that interview, because detail can thin out when an account runs through a language the speaker did not choose, and those are the parts an officer is listening hardest to. Bubi has northern, southern and central-eastern varieties, so we ask for the village or district before assigning rather than treating the island as one pool.

Bubi Interpreting for Asylum Claims from Equatorial Guinea

Equatoguinean asylum claims frequently rest on Bubi ethnicity itself. The Movimiento para la Autodeterminacion de la Isla de Bioko was founded in 1993, and after attacks on a military barracks on Bioko in January 1998 hundreds of Bubi were detained. Amnesty International observed the five-day summary military trial that followed in May 1998, recorded allegations of torture and of confessions extracted under it, and declared many of those held prisoners of conscience on the basis that they had been arrested for being Bubi.

An applicant describing that history is naming organizations, prisons, villages and dates that a general Spanish interpreter may hear as noise. Our briefing to the interpreter is to render each answer as given, hesitation included, and to flag a gap rather than fill it. The same linguist can cover the attorney's preparation sessions so the terminology in the declaration matches what is said at the interview. See USCIS interview interpreting and court interpreting.

Certified Translation of Equatoguinean Records for Bubi Speakers

There is essentially no Bubi document to translate. Bubi is written rarely, and Equatorial Guinea registers births, marriages and deaths in Spanish through the Registro Civil offices of the Ministry of Justice, with a central registry in Malabo. So what arrives for translation is Spanish, and USCIS asks under 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3) for a complete certified English version of it.

Baptismal Records in a Bubi File With No Birth Certificate

Civil registration in Equatorial Guinea is far from universal, and many adults hold no original certificate. What families bring instead is a baptismal record from a parish, a late registration made years after the event, or a sworn statement standing in for a document that was never created.

Each of those is translated as what it is. A late registration carries two dates, the birth and the entry, and both belong in the English version rather than one of them. Where nothing exists, 8 CFR 103.2(b)(2) allows evidence that the record is unavailable, then secondary evidence, then affidavits from two people with direct personal knowledge, and the State Department Reciprocity Schedule for Equatorial Guinea sets out what the country does and does not issue. See birth certificate translation.

Questions we get asked