Greenlandic Translation Services

Prism Language Solutions translates Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) into English and English into Greenlandic, and gives every caller the same warning first: most of a Greenlander's official paperwork is written in Danish, not in Greenlandic. We read the file, tell you which pages carry Kalaallisut, translate both languages where a record is bilingual, and deliver each item with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy.

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

Kalaallisut, the West Greenlandic standard, is the language of most of Greenland's roughly 57,000 speakers and has been the official language of the territory since the Self-Government Act took effect in 2009. Two other Inuit varieties are spoken there, Tunumiit on the east coast and Inuktun in the far north, and they are far enough apart that we ask which district a speaker or a writer comes from before assigning anyone.

• 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

Greenlandic or Danish? Checking Before You Order the Translation

The split is usually clean. Anything generated by the civil register, including the certificate of personal data confirming birth, name, marital status or death, comes out of the Danish CPR system in Danish. Anything issued by a Greenlandic municipality, school or church since Kalaallisut became official may be in Greenlandic alone or printed in both languages down the page.

Where a document carries two texts we translate both and say so on the certificate, because the Danish and Greenlandic halves are not always word-for-word equivalents and a difference between them is something a reviewing officer would rather see than discover. For the Danish half of the file, see Danish translation.

• Personattest and other CPR extracts: Danish
• Municipal, school and church papers issued in Greenland since 2009: Greenlandic, or Greenlandic and Danish together
• Older parish and mission records: Greenlandic in the pre-1973 spelling
• Court and police documents: normally Danish
• Letters, statements and family papers written by hand: Greenlandic

Certified Greenlandic Translation for USCIS and Green Card Filings

The requirement itself is short. A Kalaallisut record filed with USCIS falls under 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3) exactly as a Danish one does, which means a complete English version carrying the translator's signed statement of competence and accuracy. What differs is the risk of an incomplete job: a translator who reads Danish and not Greenlandic will render the Danish column of a bilingual certificate, skip the Greenlandic column, and hand you a document that is missing half its text.

We translate every field, seal, stamp and marginal entry on both sides of the page. The certificate wording and delivery format are set out at certified translation, and the form-by-form document list at USCIS translation.

Why There Is No Apostille on a Greenlandic Certificate

This one catches attorneys out, so it is worth stating flatly. When Denmark joined the Apostille Convention in 2006 it declared that the Convention did not apply to Greenland or the Faroe Islands. Denmark withdrew that declaration for the Faroes in October 2021. It has not done so for Greenland. A document issued in Greenland therefore cannot carry a Danish apostille, and any service promising you one is selling something that does not exist.

If a receiving body insists on authentication, the route is consular legalization through the Danish authorities and the relevant embassy, arranged before translation so the stamps are rendered with the rest of the document. For a USCIS filing none of this is required in the first place: the regulation asks for a certified English translation and nothing further. See apostille translation for what an apostille does and does not do.

Greenlandic Names and Compound Words on a Certified Record

Two features of the language decide how a Greenlandic translation reads. The first is that Kalaallisut builds very long words, packing what English needs a clause for into a single form, so a translator who divides a compound at the wrong point produces a sentence that is grammatical and wrong. This matters most in a place name or an occupation on a certificate, where there is no surrounding context to catch the error.

The second is spelling. The orthography that Samuel Kleinschmidt devised in 1851 was used until 1973, when it was replaced by the present Roman-alphabet system, so an older church or mission record spells names in a way modern Greenlandic readers do not recognize. Kalaallit Nunaat appears in the old books as Kalatdlit Nunat. We read both systems, keep the source spelling as printed, spell the applicant to the passport, and note the relationship between the forms rather than leaving an adjudicator to guess.

Greenlandic Interpreters and English into Greenlandic Material

Two smaller strands round out the work. Translation into Greenlandic is occasional and institutional: consent forms, benefit letters or school notices prepared for a Greenlandic-speaking reader in the United States, usually where a family has asked for the language by name. And interpreting in Kalaallisut is rare enough that we schedule it rather than promise it. Nearly every Greenlander also speaks Danish, so for a routine appointment a Danish interpreter is easier to seat and serves perfectly well.

For an older speaker, or for testimony about home and family, the language a person thinks in is the one to book. Those assignments run by video or phone, because the interpreter pool in this country is small and scattered. The settings are covered at medical interpreting and court interpreting.

Greenlandic Translation Prices and Delivery

Short certified items start from around $24.95 per page as a US market guide, with running text priced by the source word. Greenlandic carries a premium over Danish because so few translators work in it, which is another reason to establish which language your documents are in before ordering. A one-page certificate is normally returned within a business day or two; handwritten Greenlandic in the older spelling takes longer, because reading it is the job. Guide figures are published on the pricing page.

Questions we get asked