Translation and Interpreting Services in Chicago

Prism Language Solutions places court, medical and USCIS interpreters across Chicago and Cook County from linguists who live there, and delivers certified translation for the USCIS Chicago Field Office, the asylum office on West Madison Street and the immigration court at 55 East Monroe by email. There is one office, in New York. Spanish and Polish carry most of the volume; Arabic, Chinese, Tagalog and Urdu follow; Assyrian, Rohingya and the Mayan languages are why Chicago courts and clinics call an agency.

Last reviewed September 11, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Language Solutions

The 2024 American Community Survey puts 916,634 Chicagoans aged five and over, 35 percent, speaking a language other than English at home; the 2022 survey had Spanish at 24 percent of the city, and Cook County as a whole has about 743,000 residents with limited English proficiency. For an in-person job anywhere from Waukegan to Joliet we assign the linguist nearest the address and confirm in writing within the hour on a business day.

• 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

Court Interpreters for the Circuit Court of Cook County

Illinois runs a single unified trial court, and the Circuit Court of Cook County is the second-largest in the country after Los Angeles: more than 400 judges and some 2.4 million cases a year across a County Department, a Municipal Department in six districts and a juvenile department. Civil work sits in the Richard J. Daley Center, 55 West Randolph Street, with more than 120 courtrooms; felonies at the George N. Leighton Criminal Court Building at 26th Street and California Avenue; federal cases at the Dirksen Courthouse, 219 South Dearborn Street.

Certified Translation for USCIS Chicago Field Office

Green card and naturalization interviews for the city and 29 counties of Illinois and Indiana are held at the Chicago Field Office, 101 West Ida B. Wells Drive. Affirmative asylum is heard at the Chicago Asylum Office, 181 West Madison Street, Suite 3000, whose jurisdiction runs across fifteen states from Ohio to Montana. Both offices apply 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3): every foreign-language document must carry a full English translation certified as complete and accurate.

What we translate for Chicago filings reflects the city: Mexican actas, Polish civil status records (odpis) with their annotation columns, Ukrainian and Russian internal documents, Indian and Pakistani certificates, Arabic-language records from Jordan, Iraq and Syria. The Polish odpis is the one applicants most often submit half-translated, because the reverse-side annotations look like boilerplate and are not. Expect a birth certificate translation back within a business day; the document set by form is under USCIS translation.

Immigration Court Interpreters at 55 East Monroe

Chicago has one EOIR immigration court, at 55 East Monroe Street, Suite 1500, serving the whole region. The court provides the hearing interpreter; counsel provides everything else, and that is where we come in: the intake at the law office, the declaration drafted in the client’s language, the preparation session. Chicago attorneys tell us what Los Angeles attorneys do: the respondent from the Guatemalan highlands was booked as a Spanish speaker and turned out to speak Q’anjob’al or Mam. A Mam interpreter can join by video the same day.

Medical Interpreters for Chicago Hospitals

Cook County Health, the public system built around John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital (464 beds, 1901 West Harrison Street) and Provident Hospital, keeps Spanish interpreters on site around the clock, Polish interpreters on shift in business hours, a phone line in more than 240 languages and video in 45. Northwestern Memorial (894 beds) and Rush University Medical Center, tied first in Illinois in the 2025-26 U.S. News rankings, UChicago Medicine and the Advocate hospitals run the same contracted lines, as 45 CFR 92.201 requires. An outside interpreter is booked for the encounter the line does not fit: a Rohingya interpreter for a maternity admission, say. See medical interpreting and medical translation.

Polish, Spanish and Arabic Translation in Chicago

After English and Spanish, the languages most spoken in Chicago homes are Chinese, Polish, Tagalog, Urdu and Arabic. Polish translation is the Chicago specialty: civil records, court judgments for recognition proceedings, pension correspondence for families with parents in both countries. Spanish translation is mostly Mexican, with Puerto Rican and Guatemalan records behind it, and a Spanish interpreter for a Little Village deposition needs Mexican usage. Arabic translation and an Arabic interpreter serve the Southwest Side and Bridgeview, where the records are Jordanian, Palestinian, Iraqi and Syrian.

About 42,000 Chicagoans speak Chinese at home and 57 percent of them speak English less than very well, the highest share of any large language group after Spanish, so a Mandarin interpreter or Cantonese interpreter for Chinatown or Bridgeport is a weekly booking; Chinese translation covers both scripts. Tagalog, Urdu and an Urdu interpreter for Devon Avenue, Ukrainian for Ukrainian Village, Gujarati, Hindi, Vietnamese and Korean follow.

Assyrian and Rohingya Interpreters in Chicago

Two communities make Chicago unusual. The city holds the largest Assyrian population in the United States, 15,683 at the 2000 census, settled in Albany Park, Rogers Park and the suburbs of Skokie, Niles and Morton Grove, and their language, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, is one almost no interpreting vendor lists. Rogers Park also holds about 2,000 Rohingya, the largest Rohingya community in the country, served since 2016 by the Rohingya Culture Center on West Devon Avenue. Neither language has a certified court interpreter in Illinois, and both come up in court, hospital and asylum work. We keep speakers of each in the network and pair them with video where an in-person speaker is hours away.

Translation for Chicago Universities and Resettlement Agencies

The University of Chicago hosted 7,634 international students in 2024-25, Northwestern 7,019 and the University of Illinois Chicago 5,583, which keeps diploma translation and transcript translation for admissions steady through the year. RefugeeOne, the city’s largest resettlement agency, has worked from Rogers Park since 1982 and serves more than 2,500 refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants a year, lately from Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine. Its caseworkers need Dari, Pashto, Ukrainian and Swahili interpreters at a day’s notice; phone and video cover most of it (guide rates).

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