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Assyrian Neo-Aramaic Interpreters

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

An Assyrian elder’s second language depends on the country the family left

Can an Arabic interpreter cover an Assyrian client? Not reliably: Assyrian Neo-Aramaic is a Semitic language of its own, and an Assyrian family’s second language depends on where it lived — Arabic for families from Iraq, Persian for families from Iran. Booking Arabic for an Assyrian grandmother from Urmia or Tehran gets her an interpreter she may not understand at all.

Fieldwork among the Assyrians of Tehran, published in the Turin journal Kervan in 2019, found that every informant knew Persian, the language of schooling in Iran, and that many could read and write Persian but not Assyrian; asked to write Assyrian sentences, half of those who managed it wrote them in Persian letters. The same study found speakers switching to Persian for concepts they found easier to express in it. For an Iranian-born Assyrian, a fallback relay runs through Persian, not Arabic, and documents from Iran will be in Persian.

Urmia, the Iraqi villages and Chicago: the variety follows the family

Glottolog lists Assyrian Neo-Aramaic and Chaldean Neo-Aramaic as separate languages of the North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic group, and the Endangered Language Alliance notes that Neo-Aramaic varieties are highly diverse and many are not mutually intelligible. The written Assyrian standard has a specific origin: in the 1830s British and American Protestant missionaries in Urmia, in northwestern Iran, printed in the local Christian dialect and normalized it as sureth — chosen, a scholar quoted in Hugoye notes, not because it was the most widespread. Assyrians whose families come from other regions may speak quite different dialects, so tell us the town or region, not only “Assyrian”.

In the Census Bureau’s 2009–2013 tables, where the language is coded “Syriac”, the largest concentrations after metropolitan Detroit were Chicago (14,120 speakers), San Diego, the Modesto metro area that includes Turlock (8,065), Phoenix (4,075) and San Jose (3,535). The figure combines Assyrian and Chaldean speakers. Those metro areas are where an in-person interpreter is likeliest; elsewhere, virtual is the realistic format.

Use the name the client uses, and expect few clients to read Syriac script

Speakers call the language surayə or aturayə, and it appears in the literature as Swadaya, Lishana Aturaya, Neo-Syriac, Assyrian and — for related varieties — Chaldean. Which label a person accepts is a matter of community and church as much as linguistics. The Kervan study notes that the Chaldean Catholics of Sanandaj in Iran have almost all emigrated, especially to California: a client from Iran may describe himself as Chaldean and still be a Persian-speaking Iranian, not an Iraqi. Book under the name the client gives.

The language is written in the Syriac alphabet, but the Tehran fieldwork suggests that many Iranian Assyrians never learned to read it. A church certificate or letter in Syriac script read aloud in a session may be as unfamiliar to the client as to the attorney, so ask the client before assuming they can confirm a document by reading it.

Assyrian Neo-Aramaic is a rare language

Only a handful of qualified Assyrian Neo-Aramaic interpreters work in the United States — we found five or fewer across state court rosters, professional directories and freelance platforms — and courts and hospitals book them first. That is why Assyrian Neo-Aramaic carries the rare-language rate, 75% on top of the base: $140 an hour by video or phone with a one-hour minimum, and $192.50 an hour in person with a two-hour minimum, plus travel. Give us as much notice as you can: two weeks is comfortable, a few days often is not enough.

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, except the rare languages — Mam, K’iche’, Q’anjob’al, Tzotzil, Mixtec, Fuzhounese, Hakka, Hakha Chin, Kachin, Balochi, Bambara, Soninke, Tigre, Chaldean Neo-Aramaic and Assyrian Neo-Aramaic — which carry 75%. If a language is not on the standard 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.
• Rare languages — add 75%: $140 per hour virtual and $192.50 per hour in person. These are the languages with only a handful of qualified interpreters in the United States, listed below.
• 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 within minutes, four business hours at most, 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 or rare 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; “Syriac”)
• Glottolog 5.3 — Assyrian Neo-Aramaic
• Emanuela Braida, “Neo-Aramaic Garshuni”, Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 17.1 (2014)
• Harir Sherkat, “Gli assiri di Tehran: un profilo sociolinguistico”, Kervan 23/1 (2019), University of Turin
• Endangered Language Alliance — Neo-Aramaic

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