Mina (Gen) Translation Services | Prism Language Solutions

Mina, which its own speakers call Gen, belongs to the Togolese and Beninese coast between Lomé and Grand-Popo. Togo and Benin register births, marriages and deaths in French, so a Mina case is normally a French translation job with a Gen interpreter attached to it. Prism Language Solutions handles both halves, certifies the French records for USCIS, and translates the Mina material that turns up in asylum and family files.

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

Mina is a young language with a documented beginning, which is unusual and useful. Ga and Fante families left the Gold Coast in the seventeenth century, settled at Aného and Glidji, married into Ewe, Aja, Watchi and Peda communities, and the speech that came out of that mixture became the trade language of the coast. It carries Ga and Fante vocabulary, later English and French loanwords, and an Ewe backbone.

That history is why a Mina booking half works when it is filled with an Ewe interpreter. The greetings land, the ordinary sentences land, and then a word from the coastal stratum goes past unremarked. In a routine appointment nobody notices. In an asylum interview it becomes a gap in the record that nobody can see.

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Mina and Ewe on an Interpreter Booking Form

Gen, Ewe, Aja and Fon are all Gbe languages and none of them substitutes cleanly for another. The practical rule we work to is geography: a speaker from the Maritime Region of Togo or the coast of southern Benin is booked as Mina, and a speaker from inland Togo or Ghana's Volta Region is booked as Ewe. Where the file says only Togo, we ask for the town before confirming anyone.

There is a second trap, and it runs the other way. Mina spread across southern Togo as a market and street language, so a great many people speak it as a second or third language while their home language is Ewe, Aja, Watchi or something else again. A person who tells an intake clerk they speak Mina may be describing the language they trade in, not the one they grieve in. For an account of a childhood, a family compound or a threat, we ask which language they think in and book that.

Certified Mina Translation Usually Means French Translation

The documents a Gen-speaking family sends us are French, every one of them. A birth record from a mairie or a centre d'état civil, a marriage record, a divorce judgment, school certificates, a police clearance, a residence certificate. None of that is in Mina and none of it ever was, so the certified work runs French to English. Saying so on the phone costs us the fee for a Mina translator and keeps the client; see French translation for the rates and the turnaround on that side.

What is genuinely in Mina is private and usually spoken before it is written: a recorded call from Aného, a voice note, a statement a person wrote for themselves before an attorney was involved, a letter from a trader relative. Those we translate from Mina, name the language on the certificate, and deliver with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy. See certified translation and transcription.

Togolese and Beninese Records in a Mina Speaker's USCIS File

Two countries, two registries, and a shared habit of late registration. Beninese records come from the commune of birth and the mairie. Togolese records come from the same kind of office, and Togo gives a family 45 days to declare a birth under its 2009 civil status law; after that the registration rests on a court judgment from the tribunal de première instance, which is then transcribed into the register of the birthplace.

Describe each paper as what it legally is. An applicant may hold the judgment, the transcription and a recent extract, three documents recording one birth, and a translation that calls all three a birth certificate invites a query that need never have happened. We translate each separately, give the issuing office and the dates as printed, and add a note showing how the three fit together. For the northern Togo version of this, with its own timing problems, see Kabye. For the document page, see birth certificate translation.

Mina Interpreters for Asylum Interviews, Courts and Clinics

Interpreting is where the language itself earns its keep. Most requests are asylum interviews and immigration hearings, with medical appointments behind them, and a working-age applicant from Lomé will often be offered French instead. French is genuinely the right call for some of them. It is the wrong call for an older relative, for a market trader whose working life ran in Gen, and for anyone describing events from a Gen-speaking town.

There is no certification exam for court interpreters in this language in any state, so a judge qualifies the person on the record, and a clerk out of options is usually the one who calls. Prism fills those assignments as a private agency, holding no appointment from any court. Since 13 September 2023 affirmative asylum applicants have had to bring their own interpreter to the USCIS interview, which for a language this scarce means booking weeks out. See USCIS interview interpreting and medical interpreting.

Mina Translation and Interpreting Costs

French pages price like French: a short certified record from around $24.95 as a US market guide, longer judgments by the source word, most short documents back inside 24 hours. Mina audio is quoted on running time and is slower, because there are few people who can do it and a recording with two voices over each other takes several passes. On-site interpreting is hourly against a two-hour minimum, and phone or video can usually be arranged the same day. Ranges are on the pricing page; the written quote fixes the figure.

Ready to start? Send the document or the booking details through the quote form, call +1 (833) 282 8883, or email info@prismlinguistics.com. You get a fixed written price within 60 minutes during business hours.

Questions we get asked

Is Mina the same language as Ewe?

No, though they are close. Gen, which most Americans see written as Mina, grew out of Ga and Fante settlement at Aného and Glidji and sits beside Ewe, Aja and Fon in the Gbe group. An Ewe interpreter will follow a Mina speaker most of the way and lose the coastal vocabulary, which is exactly the part an asylum record cannot afford to lose.

My client's documents are Togolese. Do I need a Mina translator?

Almost certainly not for the documents. Togo and Benin keep their registers in French, so the birth, marriage and school records go to a French translator. Book a Mina linguist for the interview, the hearing or any recording that is actually in the language.

Why does my Togolese birth record look like a court judgment?

Because the birth was declared after the 45-day window Togolese law allows, so a court issued a judgment standing in place of the declaration and the register was updated from it. That is ordinary rather than suspicious. We translate the judgment as a judgment and note how it relates to any transcription or extract in the same file.

The intake form says Mina. Is that enough to assign an interpreter?

Not on its own. Mina is widely spoken as a market language in southern Togo, so it may be the client's second or third language rather than their first. Give us the town and ask the client which language they grew up speaking at home, and we assign on that answer.

Can you translate a Mina voice note for an asylum filing?

Yes. The recording is transcribed in Mina, translated alongside and time-stamped, with overlapping speech and inaudible passages marked rather than reconstructed. Switches into French, which are constant in coastal Togolese speech, are shown where they happen.

Mina Translation Services