Irish Translation Services

Prism Language Solutions translates Irish, the Gaeilge of Ireland, into certified English for probate files, genealogy and citizenship work, court exhibits and the occasional USCIS filing, and translates English into Irish where an organization wants the language used properly. Anything certified leaves here with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy attached. Most callers, though, get the same first answer: check the document, because Irish civil records are usually in English already.

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

Two things have to be settled before anything else. Irish here means the Irish language, Gaeilge, not the English spoken in Ireland, which needs no translator at all; and Irish is not Scottish Gaelic, which is a separate language with separate translators and is covered at Scottish Gaelic translation. Booking the wrong one of those three costs a week.

• 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

Do Your Irish Documents Need a Certified Translation?

Usually not, and the ten minutes it takes to check will save you a fee. A birth, marriage or death certificate obtained from the General Register Office is normally an English-language document and can be filed as it stands. Where a family registered in Irish, or where a Gaeltacht record carries Irish entries, those entries are foreign-language text and do need a certified English version before they go to USCIS under 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3).

One further wrinkle applies only inside Europe. Since Regulation (EU) 2016/1191 took effect in February 2019, an Irish certificate can be issued with a multilingual standard form attached so that another EU member state cannot demand a translation. That form does nothing for a US filing, because the United States is not a member state, and we have had people arrive convinced it replaced the certified translation. It does not. What the signed certificate does cover is set out at certified translation.

Certified Irish Translation of Register Entries, Wills and Letters

The work that genuinely exists in this language falls into a short list, and most of it is not immigration at all. Probate is the biggest part: a will drafted in Irish, correspondence from a Dublin law firm's file that quotes Irish passages, older deeds and land papers. Then come the genealogy and citizenship-by-descent files, where an applicant working back toward a Foreign Births Register entry hits a school roll, a parish note or a census return written in Irish.

We translate the Irish in full, reproduce the English that already sits beside it rather than retyping it, and identify every seal and marginal annotation. Where a document mixes the two languages line by line, which older Gaeltacht material often does, the translation shows which language each passage was in. That matters to an attorney reading the file later.

• Wills, probate correspondence and deeds with Irish-language passages
• Register entries and parish records made in Irish
• Letters, diaries and family papers for a genealogy or citizenship file
• Recordings and oral history in Irish, transcribed and translated side by side
• English material rendered into Irish for signage, ceremonies and publications

Irish and Anglicized Names on a Certified Document

This is the recurring problem, and it is a real one. A man is Sean O Briain on the Irish-language record and John O'Brien on the passport, and those are not two men. The same happens with Maire and Mary, Seamus and James, Ni and Nic and Mac in a woman's surname, and with the fada, the accent that a US database strips out and a clerk then leaves out permanently.

We translate what the record says, spell the person to the travel document in the body of the work, and set out the Irish and English forms together with a line confirming they identify one individual. We do not decide for you which name is correct. If the certificate and the petition genuinely disagree, your attorney should see that, not have it tidied away by a translator.

Irish Interpreters and the Munster, Connacht and Ulster Dialects

Irish interpreting requests are rare and deliberate. Roughly 20,000 people reported speaking Irish daily inside the Gaeltacht at the 2022 census, and every one of them also speaks English, so nobody books an Irish interpreter because a person cannot follow the proceedings. They book one because a witness chooses to give evidence in Irish, or because a recording or an earlier statement is in the language and has to reach the record intact, or because an elderly speaker is simply more exact in the language they grew up in.

When that choice is made, the dialect question is real. Munster, Connacht and Ulster Irish differ in pronunciation and everyday vocabulary enough to matter in testimony, so we ask which part of the country the speaker comes from before assigning anyone. Most of these sessions run by video. The settings are described at court interpreting, and recorded material at transcription.

Irish Translation Cost and Turnaround

Printed Irish of the kind found on a register entry or a will is quoted from around $24.95 per page for a short certified document as a US market guide, with longer text priced by the source word. Handwriting costs more, because reading a nineteenth-century hand is the actual work, and audio is quoted on its length rather than its word count. A short certified item is normally delivered within a business day of an agreed quote. If what you send turns out to be English, we will tell you and charge you nothing for looking. Guide ranges are set out at pricing.

Questions we get asked