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Hausa Interpreters

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

Hausa is a lingua franca, so the person who "speaks Hausa" may have another first language

Will a Hausa interpreter work for anyone from northern Nigeria? Not always: Hausa is in widespread use as a regional lingua franca, but in Borno and much of Yobe the dominant language is Kanuri, and 28 first languages are spoken in Borno alone, according to a Translators without Borders assessment of the north-east in 2017. Aid agencies there named Kanuri, Shuwa Arabic, Marghi and Fulfulde as the languages they struggled to communicate in — with staff who mostly spoke English and Hausa.

The same assessment describes interviews passing through four languages — English to Hausa to Kanuri to Shuwa and back — with "unknown levels of information loss". That chain is what to avoid in a declaration or a hearing. Ask what the person spoke at home; if it is Kanuri, Fulfulde or another language, book that if it can be staffed, and use Hausa only if the person confirms it is strong enough for the subject. The Census Bureau codes Kanuri, Zarma and the Fula languages as separate languages from Hausa, and they are.

Hausa itself crosses borders: Glottolog lists it in Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Benin and Burkina Faso. Say which country the speaker is from: it decides whether the second language and the documents in the file are English or French, and so who can sight-translate them.

There is no published count of Hausa speakers in the US, and the pool is small

Hausa is a Chadic language of the Afro-Asiatic family, and that is how the Census Bureau files it. In the standard American Community Survey tables it disappears into "Amharic, Somali, or other Afro-Asiatic languages" (638,785 speakers in 2024), counted together with Amharic and Somali. There is no official US figure for Hausa alone.

What that means in practice is a small pool of qualified interpreters and longer lead times than the size of the language in West Africa would suggest. Virtual sessions are the realistic default. Where no Hausa interpreter is available on your date, relay through English or French may be possible for some meetings; we confirm whether we can staff it before you book.

In accounts from the north-east, a neutral interpreter matters as much as a fluent one

Translators without Borders found cases in north-east Nigeria where confidentiality, or the chance to hear from minority groups, was lost because no neutral interpreter was available — in one, soldiers from a local barracks interpreted while women's and girls' protection concerns were surveyed in Damasak in March 2017. The same assessment notes low literacy, particularly among women.

An asylum applicant from that region may be describing armed groups, the military, or both, and may not want an interpreter they connect with either side or with a particular community. A woman describing sexual violence may want a woman interpreting. Neither is likely to be volunteered. Ask, tell us when you request the booking, and we will confirm whether we can staff to it before you book.

Hausa is a limited-availability language

There are comparatively few qualified Hausa interpreters working in the United States, and the ones there are get booked. That is why Hausa 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.

• Translators without Borders — Language barriers in the humanitarian response in north-eastern Nigeria (initial assessment, July 2017)
• Glottolog — Hausa
• US Census Bureau — American Community Survey language code list
• Census Reporter — US Census Bureau ACS 2024 1-year, table B16001, Language spoken at home by ability to speak English (United States)

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