Navajo Translation Services

Prism Language Solutions works in Navajo, Diné bizaad, and the work runs in the opposite direction to almost every other language we cover. Navajo speakers are United States citizens whose birth certificates, court summonses and consent forms are already in English, so there is rarely anything to translate into English for an immigration filing. What courts, hospitals, tribal programs and agencies ask for instead is English material put into Navajo, recordings transcribed, and an interpreter who can carry a hearing or a diagnosis.

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

Navajo is the most widely spoken Native American language in the country by a distance. Census Bureau figures from the 2017 to 2021 American Community Survey put 161,174 speakers at home, close to half of everyone in the United States who speaks a Native North American language, and it ranks among the fifteen most spoken languages other than English in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

• 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

Why There Is No Navajo Birth Certificate to Translate

Arizona, New Mexico and Utah issue vital records in English. A Certificate of Indian Blood is in English. So is the court summons, the hospital consent form, the benefits determination and the school notice. Nobody has ever needed a certified Navajo to English translation of a civil record, and an agency that offers you one has not understood the language.

What does get certified runs the other way: an English translation of a recorded Navajo statement, a transcript of a Navajo interview for a case file, a declaration. Each carries a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy, as described on certified translation. If you arrived here looking for help with a USCIS filing, this is not the page you need.

Translating Court, Health and Benefits Material into Written Navajo

This is the bulk of Navajo translation. A court or a federally funded provider with a language access plan under Title VI at 42 U.S.C. 2000d, or 45 CFR 92.201 where federal health funding is involved, needs a notice of rights, a discharge instruction, a public health advisory or a patient survey in Navajo. We produce it in the standard orthography with the tone marks and nasal hooks intact.

Then comes the part clients do not want to hear. Most fluent Navajo speakers were schooled in English and do not read Navajo comfortably, so a printed Navajo document on its own is a compliance record rather than a communication. Pair it with a recorded reading and it starts to work. Sight translation, an interpreter reading an English document aloud in Navajo to the person in front of them, is the commoner request and is booked as interpreting.

Navajo Orthography on a Translated Document: Tone and Nasal Hooks

Navajo is written in the Latin alphabet, which misleads people into thinking it will survive a US database. It marks high tone with an acute accent, nasal vowels with a hook under the letter, length by doubling, and the glottal stop with a raised mark, and all four can appear on one vowel. Strip them and you change the word, sometimes into a different word entirely.

Two consequences for anyone commissioning this work. Ask what font and encoding will be delivered, because a Navajo file that renders as boxes in your case management system has cost you the job. And a name printed without its diacritics on a state record is not the same string as the name written properly, which is worth a translator’s note whenever both appear in one file.

Navajo Court Interpreting and the Federal Certification

Navajo is one of only three languages, with Spanish and Haitian Creole, for which the federal courts recognise a certified interpreter credential; every other language is covered by the professionally qualified or language skilled categories. That matters because serious offences committed in Indian country fall to federal prosecution under 18 U.S.C. 1153, so the district courts in Arizona and New Mexico hear a steady run of cases where a Navajo-speaking witness or defendant is entitled to an interpreter under the Court Interpreters Act.

State courts in Arizona and New Mexico keep their own Navajo rosters and credentials, and New Mexico counts Navajo among its most requested languages. The Navajo Nation’s own district courts and Peacemaking Program work in Navajo with their own people. Tell us the court and the case type and we will say which credential it expects and whether we can supply it for your date. Prism takes this work privately and is on no court’s vendor list. See court interpreting.

Navajo Medical Interpreting at IHS and Off-Reservation Hospitals

Diabetes, kidney disease and cancer care generate long technical conversations, and Navajo has no single word for most of the English terms in them. A competent Navajo medical interpreter explains a biopsy or a dialysis schedule in a phrase, checks the patient has followed, then renders the answer. Build those minutes into the appointment.

Indian Health Service facilities and tribally run hospitals generally have their own arrangements. The gap opens at the off-reservation hospitals in Phoenix, Albuquerque, Flagstaff and Salt Lake City where elders are transferred for specialist care and nobody on the unit speaks Navajo. A bedside is reached fastest by video; for a capacity assessment, a long consent conversation or a delivery we send someone in person. We check connectivity in advance, because coverage across the Nation is uneven. See medical interpreting.

Navajo Transcription and Recorded Interviews for Legal Files

Recorded Navajo turns up in criminal defense files, tribal proceedings, oral history projects and family matters: a police interview, a jail call, a statement from an elder. We produce a Navajo transcript with the English beside it, time-stamped, inaudible passages marked rather than reconstructed, and switches into English shown where they fall.

Elder speech takes longer to transcribe than its running time suggests; send place names and clan references spelled out where you know them. See transcription.

Navajo Translation Cost and Lead Time

Written Navajo is quoted per project rather than per page, because the material is usually a set of notices rather than one certificate. Transcription is quoted on the length and quality of the recording. Hourly rates and a two-hour minimum apply to interpreting in the room, with travel quoted separately, since a hearing in Gallup or Flagstaff can sit three hours from where the interpreter lives. Guide figures are on the pricing page.

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