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Igbo Interpreters

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

Standard Igbo is the shared form, and many speakers grew up in a dialect a long way from it

Is Igbo one language? Largely — but the University of Pennsylvania's African Studies Center describes it as having dozens of geographical dialects, and the Census Bureau's language list codes Ika, Ikwere, Ogbah and Ukwuani-Aboh-Ndoni as Igboid languages separate from Igbo itself. Igboland covers five wholly Igbo-speaking states (Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo) and parts of Rivers and Delta, and a speaker from those two states may speak one of those related languages at home.

Linguists still treat the dialect question as live: a 2025 Igbo Studies Association paper comparing Standard Igbo with the dialect of Nsukka starts from the continuing need for mutual intelligibility among Igbo speakers. For an interview or a hearing, tell us the state and town the speaker comes from. An interpreter who knows to expect a northern or riverine variety prepares differently from one who expects the standard.

Igbo testimony moves between Igbo, Nigerian Pidgin and English, and the interpreter has to follow all three

Most Igbo speakers in the United States also speak English: in the 2024 American Community Survey, 81% of the 773,238 people who speak "Yoruba, Twi, Igbo, or other languages of Western Africa" at home said they speak English very well. When an Igbo interpreter is booked it is usually for an older relative, a recent arrival, or testimony where English fails under pressure — and the speaker rarely stays in one language.

Amnesty International's 2025 research in the South-East is a fair picture of how people actually talk about these events: its interviews with survivors were conducted in English, Igbo and pidgin English. The Census Bureau codes Nigerian Pidgin as a language of its own, not as English, and that is the right way to think about it in a hearing. A speaker who switches into Pidgin for the hardest part of an account needs an interpreter who renders it rather than treating it as broken English that everyone already understood.

Accounts from the South-East carry political weight the client may not mention

On 20 September 2017 the Nigerian government proscribed the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) as a terrorist organization, and a federal court upheld the ban. Amnesty International's report on January 2021 to December 2024 in Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo documents abuses on several sides: security forces and the state-backed Ebube Agu outfit, IPOB's armed wing the Eastern Security Network, "unknown gunmen", cults and vigilantes. It records the killing, torture and secret detention of suspected IPOB members, and notes that the authorities attribute every attack and security problem in the region to IPOB/ESN. An applicant from the South-East may be describing harm from any of them.

An asylum declaration about any of this names organizations, security units and accusations that are contested on both sides, and the interpreter has to render them as the speaker says them — neither softened nor sharpened. The speaker may also have views about who interprets: someone from the same community, or someone they fear might report back. They will rarely say so. Ask the client whether they have a preference and tell us; we would rather staff to it than find out in the transcript.

Igbo is a limited-availability language

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

• University of Pennsylvania, Penn Language Center — Igbo
• US Census Bureau — American Community Survey language code list
• Igbo Studies Association — Ogboi and Njoku, A comparative study of Standard Igbo and Nsukka speech (2025 conference abstract)
• Census Reporter — US Census Bureau ACS 2024 1-year, table B16001, Language spoken at home by ability to speak English (United States)
• Amnesty International — Attacks and unlawful killings in South-East Nigeria: a decade of impunity (AFR 44/9363/2025, August 2025)
• US Census Bureau — Detailed Languages Spoken at Home, 2009–2013 ACS (October 2015)

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