Vlach Translation Services

Prism Language Solutions covers Vlach, which in nearly every case means Aromanian, a Balkan Romance language spoken in pockets of Greece, Albania, North Macedonia and Romania. Because no state has ever run a registry in it, a Vlach family’s certificates are Greek, Albanian, Macedonian, Romanian or Serbian, and that is what we translate and certify. Aromanian itself comes up in interpreting, in old letters and church entries, and in the spelling of names and villages.

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

This is a small language and we will not pretend otherwise. The Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, recommending protection for Aromanian culture in 1997, put speakers at over half a million at the start of the twentieth century and roughly half that by the time it reported, spread across Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, North Macedonia, Serbia, Romania, Germany, the United States and Australia. UNESCO classes the language as endangered. There is no meaningful Aromanian-speaking population in any one American city.

• 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

Vlach or Aromanian: Which Linguist the Case Needs

The word Vlach has been applied to several different communities, so the first question at intake is which one. If the family comes from Greece, Albania or North Macedonia, they are almost certainly Aromanian and an Aromanian linguist is the right match. If they come from the Timok valley in eastern Serbia, where about 21,000 people declared themselves Vlachs on the 2022 census, they speak an archaic variety of Romanian rather than Aromanian, and a Romanian linguist is far closer than an Aromanian one.

There is also Megleno-Romanian, a third and much smaller Eastern Romance variety on the Greek and Macedonian border, which an Aromanian speaker does not simply follow. Tell us the country, the region and the village if you have it. Ten seconds of that at booking is the difference between an assignment that works and one that is discovered to be wrong in the middle of a hearing.

Certified Translation of the Documents Vlach Families Hold

Aromanian has never been the language of a registry office anywhere, so a Vlach file contains no Aromanian certificates. A family from Greece holds extracts from the municipal registry in Greek; from Albania, a civil status certificate from Gjendja Civile in Albanian; from North Macedonia, a birth register extract in Macedonian; from eastern Serbia, a Serbian municipal extract. Those are the certified jobs, prepared under 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3) with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy. See certified translation.

Where Aromanian genuinely appears in writing, it is private or ecclesiastical: letters between relatives, a church entry, a school or association record from a Vlach community organization, a modern text written in Latin script by someone using one of the competing spelling systems. There is no single agreed orthography, so we describe which convention a document appears to follow rather than silently standardizing it.

Vlach Names and Villages on a Certified Document

The Aromanian element in these files usually shows up in the names, and it causes real confusion. One family can hold a Greek certificate and an Albanian one that render the same surname two different ways, because each national registry transcribed the Aromanian name into its own alphabet and its own conventions. Greek records also carry a long history of officially altered surnames, which is part of why a grandfather’s papers and a grandson’s may not obviously belong together.

Village names move the same way. A settlement has an Aromanian name, a Greek or Macedonian official name, and sometimes a third form used in an older record. Each document is translated as it stands, the applicant is spelled to the passport, and the alternate forms of a name or a place go in a translator's note. Identifying one person across two national records is the attorney's decision, not something a translation should quietly make.

Vlach Interpreters for Court, Clinic and USCIS Interviews

No state certifies court interpreters in Aromanian, so a court works from a qualified interpreter, and in practice a bench comes to us once its own roster is exhausted. Typical matters are probate, a guardianship application for an elderly relative, or a deposition in which a witness recalls events in the language of a Balkan village. Prism takes the assignment directly from the attorney or the court and is a private agency, not a court-appointed vendor. See court interpreting.

Vlach Translation Prices, Apostille and Turnaround

Because the certified work is national-language work, it is priced at ordinary European rates, from around $24.95 a page as a US market guide for a short certificate, usually delivered within a business day. Aromanian letters, recordings and church entries are quoted individually on the handwriting and the audio quality. Interpreting runs at the usual on-site range with a two-hour minimum, and by phone or video at lower cost. The pricing page carries the ranges.

All the relevant countries issue apostilles, so the stamp is obtained at home and translated along with the record rather than instead of it: Greece has been in the Apostille Convention since 1985, North Macedonia since 1991, Romania since 2001 and Albania since 2004. Get it attached before the file comes over. See apostille translation.

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