Romani Translation Services

Prism Language Solutions works in Romani chiefly as an interpreting language, for asylum interviews, immigration hearings, clinics and school meetings, with the interpreter matched to the family's dialect group rather than picked off a list. Documents are a separate question: no state issues civil records in Romani, so a Roma client's birth certificate is in Romanian, Hungarian, Slovak, Serbian or Bulgarian, and that is the certified translation we quote for.

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

Romani is an Indo-Aryan language carried across Europe for a thousand years and spoken today in dozens of varieties, from Spain to Ukraine. It has no country, no ministry, no registry office and no single written standard. That one fact shapes this page: little to translate out of Romani, a great deal to interpret in it, and a recurring documentation problem that is not a translation problem at all.

• 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

Booking a Romani Interpreter Without Getting Romanian

We are called in to fix this pairing more often than any other in our European work. A clerk sees Romania on the file and books Romanian, or sees the word Romani and books Romanian because the spelling is close, and an hour of court time goes on discovering that the interpreter and the witness cannot understand each other. The reverse is worse: a Roma applicant who speaks fluent Romanian may politely work through a Romani interpreter from a different dialect and answer questions they only half understood.

Ask two questions at intake and the problem disappears. Which country did the family leave, and which language do they use at home with each other. If the answers are Romania and Romani, book both linguists: one for the hearing, one for the certificates.

Which Romani Dialect to Ask For When Booking an Interpreter

There is no standard Romani, and the dialect groups are far enough apart that speakers from opposite ends of the range struggle with each other. In the United States the Vlax varieties are the ones most often encountered, Kalderash and Machvaya among them, carried by communities settled here for generations. Newer arrivals from Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech lands often speak Central Romani varieties, which a Vlax speaker follows only in part.

Certified Document Translation for Romani-Speaking Clients

The documents in a Roma file are not in Romani. A family from Romania holds a certificat de naștere issued by the local starea civilă; from Hungary, a születési anyakönyvi kivonat from the anyakönyvi hivatal; from Slovakia, a rodný list from the matričný úrad; from Serbia or Bulgaria, the municipal extract of that country. So the certified work is Hungarian, Slovak, Serbian or Bulgarian to English, prepared under 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3) with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy.

A Romani translator is needed for what a client writes or says themselves: a declaration given in Romani, a letter, a recorded call put into a case file. That work exists and we do it. It is usually a page or two, quoted separately from the national-language certificates so you can see which is which. See certified translation.

When a Romani Applicant Has No Birth Record at All

This is the part of the work that matters most and gets written about least. Missing civil documentation among Roma communities in Europe is documented and long-standing: the European Network on Statelessness and its partners name lack of civil documentation, state succession in the former Yugoslavia and inherited statelessness as the main drivers of Roma statelessness in the Western Balkans, and describe registration systems close to impossible to work through without legal aid. A child never registered at birth grows into an adult who cannot prove a nationality.

For a US filing the route is 8 CFR 103.2(b)(2): where a required record does not exist or cannot be obtained, the applicant may submit secondary evidence, and where that is unavailable too, affidavits from people with direct personal knowledge. Our part is translating that evidence for what it is. A hospital note, a baptismal entry, a school enrolment list, a municipal refusal letter, a sworn statement from an aunt. We name each document by its real title and never let a translation imply a registration that did not happen. Attorneys building these files should read immigration attorneys.

Romani Interpreters for Asylum Interviews and Immigration Court

The largest single source of Romani interpreting we handle is asylum. Discrimination and violence against Roma in several European countries is documented in State Department country reports and by European monitoring bodies, and claims are brought on that basis, though the evidentiary burden falls on the individual applicant rather than on group membership. That is why the interpreting has to be exact.

An asylum officer or an immigration judge weighs the applicant's own account and how it holds together across a long interview. Tidying a rambling answer, shortening a repetition or smoothing a correction hands the decision-maker a different story from the one told. We brief every Romani interpreter to render hesitations, self-corrections and repetitions as they come, and we do not seat a relative or a community figure in the chair, whatever the family prefers. See USCIS interview interpreting and court interpreting. Romani is not a language any state certifies court interpreters in, so a court works from a qualified one and we set out the person's background before the date.

Romani Names, Translation Cost and Turnaround

One more trap worth naming. A Roma client may carry an official name on the Romanian or Hungarian certificate and a Romani name in daily life, and if nobody reconciles the two the birth record and the asylum declaration read like two different people. We show the official name spelled to the travel document, note the Romani name, and keep both consistent across the file.

Certificates from the national registries are priced as ordinary European work, from around $24.95 a page as a US market guide, usually delivered inside a business day. Romani declarations and recordings are quoted individually because dialect and handwriting drive the time. Interpreting is typically $45 to $95 an hour on site with a two-hour minimum; see medical interpreting and the pricing page.

Questions we get asked