Translation and Interpreting Services in Portland

Portland, Oregon clients use Prism Language Solutions for certified translation, delivered by email to any address in the city, and for court, medical and USCIS interpreters assigned from a nationwide network in person, by phone or by video. For an in-person job a linguist based in the Portland area is sent; the company has one office, in New York. Vietnamese, Chinese and Russian follow Spanish in volume, and Mam, Somali and Chuukese are the requests other providers struggle with.

Portland Public Schools draws the same map: it translates and interprets for families in Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Russian and Somali, and runs dual language immersion in Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Spanish and Vietnamese. A booking desk that is strong in those five, and can still find Mam or Chuukese, covers most of what the city asks for.

• 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

Vietnamese, Chinese and Russian Translation in Portland

About 11,160 Portland residents were born in Vietnam, second only to Mexico. Vietnamese translation here runs from pre-1975 and postwar civil records in family green card cases to school discipline letters and hospital discharge instructions, and a Vietnamese interpreter is booked for everything from arraignments to eye exams.

Court Interpreters at the Multnomah County Central Courthouse

Multnomah County Circuit Court tries adult felonies and misdemeanors at the Central Courthouse, 1200 SW First Avenue, a 17-story building that opened on October 5, 2020 in place of the 1914 courthouse. Juvenile dependency and delinquency matters are heard at the Juvenile Justice Complex, 1401 NE 68th Avenue, and misdemeanors arising east of 122nd Avenue go to the East County Courthouse in Gresham.

Oregon’s Court Language Access Services coordinates interpreters in more than 170 languages, and under ORS 45.275 the court does not charge the person who needs one. Its roster lists interpreters holding the Oregon certified credential, with a master level above it, or the registered credential, and lawyers can use it to check an interpreter they hire privately. That out-of-court work is ours: the defense interview, the deposition, the translated exhibit. See court interpreting and legal translation.

Portland Immigration Court Interpreters and Mam Interpreting

The Portland Immigration Court is at 1220 SW Third Avenue, Suite 500. It provides the hearing interpreter; the attorney provides everything else, from the first client interview to the declaration and the certified translation of each exhibit. Oregon Public Broadcasting reported in May 2025 that Mam, a Mayan language of Guatemala, is among the ten languages the Oregon Judicial Department most often requests, and that Indigenous language interpreter assignments in Oregon grew by more than a quarter each year from 2020 to 2024.

Certified Translation for the Portland USCIS Field Office

Green card and naturalization interviews for Portland are held at the USCIS Portland field office, 1455 NW Overton Street, Suite 1, in the Pearl District. Oregon’s affirmative asylum cases go instead to the San Francisco Asylum Office at 75 Hawthorne Street, which also covers Alaska, California, Nevada and Washington.

Every foreign-language page in a filing needs a complete English translation with a signed certificate of accuracy, per 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3), and the receiving office decides whether it is accepted. Two avoidable mistakes weaken a Portland packet: stamps and marginal notes left out of a Vietnamese record, and a Ukrainian name spelled one way in the translation and another in the passport. Our USCIS translation service covers both, as do the birth certificate and marriage certificate pages.

Medical Interpreters for OHSU and Legacy Emanuel

Portland has Oregon’s two adult Level I trauma centers: OHSU Hospital on Marquam Hill, 576 beds beside Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, and Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in the Eliot neighborhood, 554 beds, home of the Legacy Oregon Burn Center and Randall Children’s Hospital. Both run in-house interpreter departments around the clock.

Somali, Amharic and Chuukese Interpreters in Portland

Somali is one of the five languages Portland Public Schools supports, and a Somali interpreter is a frequent booking in North and Northeast Portland. About 1,330 residents were born in Ethiopia; for them, name the language rather than the country, since Amharic, Oromo and Tigrinya are separate assignments. Some 700 residents were born in Micronesia, and a Chuukese interpreter by video is often the fastest way to cover a clinic visit.

Resettlement in the metro runs through Catholic Charities of Oregon, which has resettled more than 10,500 people since the 1980s, Lutheran Community Services Northwest and Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon’s SOAR program. Their caseworkers use phone interpreting for quick calls and book on-site interpreting for hearings and medical visits.

Diploma Translation for Portland State University Applicants

Oregon hosted 7,366 international students in 2024-25. Portland State enrolled 1,378 of them and Portland Community College 356, with India, China, Taiwan, Vietnam and Japan the leading places of origin statewide. That sets the mix of diploma translation and academic transcript translation for Portland applicants and for foreign-trained nurses and physicians going to Oregon licensing boards.

Send the files at /quote or call +1 (833) 282 8883 for a fixed written quote within the hour during business hours. Certificates are guide-priced from around $24.95 a page, and on-site interpreting typically runs $45 to $95 an hour with a two-hour minimum (guide rates).

Questions we get asked