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Afrikaans Interpreters

Professional Afrikaans interpreting, virtual or in person, for the settings where getting it wrong has consequences — asylum interviews, hearings, attorney meetings, medical appointments and school meetings.

A Dutch interpreter understands Afrikaans far better than an Afrikaans speaker understands Dutch

Can a Dutch interpreter cover an Afrikaans speaker? Not reliably, and the problem runs in one direction. In a study by linguists at Groningen and Nijmegen, Dutch secondary-school pupils restored 66.5% of the missing words in Afrikaans newspaper texts, while Afrikaans-speaking South African pupils restored only 14.3% in the Dutch versions. A Dutch interpreter may follow the witness; the witness will struggle to follow the Dutch interpreter’s questions.

The authors trace the asymmetry to history. Afrikaans grew out of the Dutch spoken at the Cape and lost much of its grammar along the way — verb agreement, the simple past, the infinitive, grammatical gender — while taking in elements of Malay, Khoikhoi and English, and it has its own vocabulary where Dutch has another word: Dutch vaak, Afrikaans dikwels, “often”. It also has a double negative, nie … nie, as in nie lank en blond nie (“not tall and blond”), which an interpreter has to read as one negation. Book Afrikaans, not Dutch.

Most Afrikaans speakers in South Africa are not white

In South Africa’s 2011 census, 3.44 million Coloured South Africans gave Afrikaans as their first language, against 2.71 million white South Africans and 0.60 million Black South Africans; Afrikaans was the first language of 75.8% of the Coloured population and 13.5% of the country. An Afrikaans speaker’s language says little about their background, and it should not be used to guess the client’s community, or to choose an interpreter on the assumption of a shared one.

That matters most where the account itself turns on race in South Africa, as the current refugee admissions do (below). If the client has a preference about the interpreter’s background, ask and tell us; the client may not raise it unprompted.

The Afrikaner refugee admissions, and who actually needs an interpreter

The presidential determination for fiscal 2026 set a refugee ceiling of 7,500, allocated primarily to Afrikaners from South Africa under Executive Order 14204, and an emergency determination on May 21, 2026 raised it to 17,500, with the additional places also for Afrikaners. Executive Order 14204 describes them as victims of unjust racial discrimination, so the accounts these refugees give in later interviews are about race and racially motivated violence — material where the interpreter’s precision and the client’s trust in the interpreter both count.

Most Afrikaans speakers already in the US speak English well: of the 23,010 counted by the Census Bureau in 2009–2013, only 1,885 spoke English less than “very well”. The largest groups were in metropolitan Atlanta (1,900), Miami, New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Houston. So many Afrikaans requests come from clients with working English who want exact testimony in their first language — a deposition, an interview where credibility is assessed, a difficult medical consultation — and that is a reasonable request rather than a sign they do not need the language.

Afrikaans is a limited-availability language

There are comparatively few qualified Afrikaans interpreters working in the United States, and the ones there are get booked. That is why Afrikaans carries the 25–30% limited-availability rate, and why lead time matters more here than with a common language: a week is comfortable, two days is a gamble.

We would rather tell you that before you book a hearing date than after. If your date is fixed and close, say so when you enquire and we will tell you honestly whether we can staff it rather than accepting and hoping.

The standard-availability languages are: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Mandarin, Cantonese, Arabic, Russian, Korean, Vietnamese, Haitian Creole, Polish, Italian, German, Japanese, Hindi, Urdu, Persian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Tagalog, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Tamil, Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Serbian, Bosnian, Somali and Nepali. Every other language we offer carries the 25–30% limited-availability rate. If a language is not on that list it is not because we cannot do it — it is because the pool of qualified interpreters in the United States is small enough that we will not promise a date without checking.

By video, by phone or in person

Virtual interpreting runs on Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams, or over the telephone. It is quicker to arrange, costs less and carries no travel charge, and it suits appointments, calls and most meetings.

In person is what venues with their own rules tend to expect, and the right choice when documents are being signed or several people are speaking at once. Tell us the platform, or the city and the venue, when you send the request.

Where interpretation is used

The settings differ in what they demand of the interpreter, which is worth saying because they are frequently priced as though they were the same work:

• Asylum and immigration interviews. USCIS asylum interviews require the applicant to bring an interpreter, and the interview can be rescheduled if the interpreter does not appear or is not competent — which makes this the setting where getting it right matters most.
• Attorney–client meetings and declarations. Preparing testimony, taking a statement, going through documents.
• Depositions and hearings. Where the record is being made and accuracy is examined afterwards.
• Medical appointments. Note that hospitals receiving federal funding generally must provide language assistance themselves, so ask before you hire.
• School meetings. IEP meetings and parent conferences — districts also have their own obligations here.
• Business meetings and signings, such as real estate closings.

Each setting has its own page — who has to provide the interpreter, what the meeting asks of one and what it costs: see interpreters by setting.

What it costs

Rates are per interpreter, per hour, and billed from the scheduled start time rather than from when everyone actually arrives.

• Virtual — $80 per hour, one-hour minimum. Zoom, Google Meet, Teams or telephone.
• In person — $110 per hour, two-hour minimum.
• Limited-availability languages — add 25–30%. Which languages those are is listed below rather than left vague.
• Travel for in-person work — $0.70 per mile from the interpreter's location.

How the travel charge works out

Travel is charged at $0.70 per mile from the interpreter's location, which means you can work it out rather than wait for a quote: a 20-mile round trip is $14, a 60-mile round trip is $42, a 150-mile round trip is $105. There is no separate call-out fee on top.

We will not pretend to know in advance where the interpreter will be coming from — that depends on the language, the date and the venue. What we do is confirm the interpreter and the exact travel figure before you book, so it is never a surprise on the invoice. Virtual assignments carry no travel charge at all, which is one reason most of what we do is virtual.

How booking an interpreter works

• You send the request with the form below: the language, the setting, the format, the date and how long it should last.
• We confirm before you commit: the interpreter, the exact price and the travel figure if there is one. We reply the same business day, and no payment is taken at this stage.
• You confirm, and the interpreter is booked for your date.

What we will tell you before you book

Two things, both of which occasionally cost us the booking. Whether the venue supplies its own interpreter. Immigration court provides one. Hospitals receiving federal funding generally must provide language assistance. School districts have obligations of their own. If yours does, you should not be paying us — ask them first.

And whether we can actually staff your date. For a limited-availability language on short notice the honest answer is sometimes no, and we would rather say it than accept a booking we cannot fill. Interpretation is not translation: see certified translation at $24.95 per page if what you need is a document rendered in writing.

What to have ready

The more of this comes in the first message, the fewer exchanges before you have a price:

• The language, the date, the start time and how long it should run.
• Virtual or in person: the platform, or the city and the venue.
• The setting and the subject matter.
• How many people need interpreting for.
• Any credential the venue requires of the interpreter.

Request an interpreter

Tell us the date, the language and the setting and we will come back with the interpreter, the exact price and the travel figure if there is one — before you commit to anything.

Sources

The facts on this page about the language and its speakers in the United States were checked against these sources on October 28, 2026.

• U.S. Census Bureau — Detailed Languages Spoken at Home, ACS 2009–2013 (nation and metro tables)
• Gooskens & van Bezooijen, “Mutual comprehensibility of written Afrikaans and Dutch: symmetrical or asymmetrical?”, Literary and Linguistic Computing 21(4), 2006
• Statistics South Africa — Census 2011 in Brief, tables 2.7–2.8 (first language by population group)
• Federal Register — Presidential Determination No. 2025-13, Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2026 (October 31, 2025)
• American Presidency Project — Emergency Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for FY 2026 (May 21, 2026)

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