Translation and Interpreting Services in Los Angeles

Prism Language Solutions supplies court, medical and USCIS interpreters in Los Angeles County by assigning a linguist who already lives near the courthouse or hospital, and delivers certified translation for the USCIS Los Angeles Field Office and the three Los Angeles immigration courts by email. The only office is in New York. Spanish, Chinese, Armenian, Korean, Tagalog and Farsi are requested most; Zapotec, Mixtec and K’iche’ are the ones the courts struggle to find.

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

The 2024 American Community Survey estimates put 5.12 million county residents aged five and over, 55 percent, speaking a language other than English at home, and 2.19 million of them speaking English less than very well. Spanish accounts for 3.49 million, but the next tier is what sets the city apart: 383,000 Chinese speakers, 224,000 Tagalog, 199,000 Armenian, 148,000 Korean and 74,000 Persian.

• 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 in Los Angeles

The Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles, is the largest single unified trial court in the country: 36 courthouses and close to 600 courtrooms, with no separate municipal court. Downtown, civil matters are heard at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse, 111 North Hill Street, and criminal cases at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center, 210 West Temple Street. The court provides interpreters free, keeps Spanish interpreters at every courthouse for eviction, small claims, civil, family, probate and traffic matters, and asks that other languages be requested before the hearing.

Immigration Court Interpreters in Los Angeles

Los Angeles has three EOIR immigration courts: 300 North Los Angeles Street, Room 4330, downtown; 6230 Van Nuys Boulevard for the Valley; and West Los Angeles at 5245 Pacific Concourse Drive. The court arranges the hearing interpreter. The attorney arranges the rest, and the rest is most of the work: the intake interview, the asylum declaration, the preparation session before an individual hearing. We place interpreters for those across the county or by video, briefed to render exactly what is said. Where the respondent’s first language is Indigenous rather than Spanish, we raise it at intake.

Certified Translation for USCIS Los Angeles Field Office

Naturalization and green card interviews for the city are at the Los Angeles Field Office, 300 North Los Angeles Street, Room 6570, in the same building as the downtown immigration court. Affirmative asylum interviews for Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Bernardino and Riverside counties are held by the Los Angeles Asylum Office, which is not in Los Angeles at all but at 14101 Myford Road in Tustin. Every foreign-language document in either file needs a full English translation certified as complete and accurate under 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3).

The Los Angeles document set is broad: Mexican and Central American actas, Armenian civil records from the Soviet-era registry and the modern one, Korean family relation certificates, Philippine PSA certificates, Iranian shenasnameh booklets with handwritten pages. Iranian and Armenian records are the ones that come back with questions, usually because a stamp or a second-page annotation was left untranslated. We translate every mark on the page. See USCIS translation and marriage certificate translation.

Medical Interpreters for Los Angeles Hospitals

The county’s Department of Health Services runs four hospitals: Los Angeles General Medical Center, the former LAC+USC, with more than 600 beds and the largest public hospital west of Texas; Harbor-UCLA; Olive View-UCLA; and Rancho Los Amigos. Its Office of Language Access and Inclusion publishes patient notices in more than eighteen languages, Armenian, Cambodian, Farsi, Hmong and Thai among them, and provides interpreters around the clock at no cost, as 45 CFR 92.201 requires. Cedars-Sinai, with 919 beds, UCLA Health, Keck Medicine of USC and Kaiser Permanente carry the same obligation through contracted video and phone lines. An agency interpreter is booked when the line is the wrong tool, an in-person Armenian interpreter for a series of oncology visits in Glendale, say. See medical interpreting and medical translation.

Spanish, Armenian and Korean Translation in Los Angeles

Chinese work splits three ways: a Mandarin interpreter for the San Gabriel Valley, a Cantonese interpreter for older Chinatown residents, and Chinese translation in simplified or traditional characters depending on where the record was issued. Tagalog translation and a Tagalog interpreter cover Historic Filipinotown and Carson; Farsi translation and a Farsi interpreter serve the Westwood Iranian community; Vietnamese, Russian, Arabic, Japanese and Khmer follow.

Zapotec, Mixtec and K’iche’ Interpreters in Los Angeles

More than a dozen Indigenous languages from Mexico and Central America are spoken in Los Angeles, and CIELO, the Indigenous-led organization founded in 2016 by two Zapotec women, has documented the gap in services for their speakers: Zapotec, Mixtec and Chinantec from Oaxaca, K’iche’, Mam and Akateko from Guatemala. These speakers are routinely booked as Spanish speakers, and the error surfaces in the room. Our intake asks where the person is from and what was spoken at home. When the answer is Indigenous, we assign a Mam interpreter or a Zapotec, Mixtec or K’iche’ speaker, often on video within the day and in person for the hearing.

Translation for Los Angeles Universities and Resettlement Agencies

The University of Southern California hosted 17,469 international students in 2023-24, first in California and fifth in the country, which with UCLA means a steady flow of diploma translation and transcript translation for admissions. Refugee resettlement clusters in Glendale: the International Rescue Committee at 625 North Maryland Avenue and Catholic Charities of Los Angeles at 4322 San Fernando Road, with arrivals from Iran, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine. Their caseworkers need Dari, Pashto, Arabic and Ukrainian interpreters at short notice, which phone and video cover the same day (guide rates).

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