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Mixtec Interpreters

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

Mixtec is a family of languages, so “a Mixtec interpreter” needs a hometown attached

Can any Mixtec interpreter understand any Mixtec speaker? Often not: Mixtec is not one language but a family of related languages from Oaxaca, Guerrero and Puebla, and speakers from different areas may not understand each other. Glottolog, the linguists’ reference catalog, lists more than fifty Mixtec languages, most with their own international language code — and the code mix itself denotes just one of them, Mixtepec Mixtec, not Mixtec in general.

The Indigenous Farmworker Study, a California survey run with California Rural Legal Assistance, puts it plainly: many Mexican languages have variants that are not necessarily mutually intelligible within the same language. It also records where comprehension does carry: around San Juan Piñas in western Oaxaca, speakers understand the villages across the border in eastern Guerrero fairly well. So the booking question is never just “Mixtec”. Tell us the town and, if you have it, the district — San Juan Mixtepec (Juxtlahuaca), Candelaria de la Unión (Tlaxiaco), San Miguel Cuevas — and we look for an interpreter from the same area.

Most Mixtec work in the United States starts in California’s farm towns

The same study estimated about 165,000 Indigenous Mexicans, adults and children, living in rural California in the late 2000s — not counting Los Angeles, San Diego, the Bay Area or Orange County — and found that over half of the Indigenous farmworkers were Mixtec speakers. The largest concentration was Fresno–Madera, with almost a quarter, followed by the Santa Maria area at 17%. Hometown networks reach further: an assembly from the Mixtec town of Santa María Tindú meets in Madera and another in northern Oregon, and émigrés from a Mixtec town in Puebla run its affairs from New York City.

Official counts miss almost all of this. The Census Bureau’s 2009–2013 language table counted only about 5,100 speakers of the entire Oto-Manguean group, to which Mixtec belongs, for the whole country. The settings follow the study’s map: farm-labor and wage claims, clinics and hospitals in the Central Valley and Central Coast, schools, and immigration matters.

What the speaker calls the language matters

Many Mixtec speakers call their language tu’un savi or sa’a savi, “word of the rain” or “language of the rain”. Some official labels instead use ntavi or da’vi, which speakers interviewed by the farmworker study translate as “poor” and reject; Spanish, in the same speakers’ Mixtec, is sa’a stchila, a “rich” or privileged language. Use the name the client uses, and give it to us in the request: it often identifies the variety as well.

Families mix languages. The study found that once settled in California, about 60% of parents spoke to their children in Spanish or a mix of Spanish and Mixtec, so in a school or pediatric appointment the parents may need Mixtec while the child answers in Spanish or English. And Spanish is frequently a second language for both generations, so a Spanish interpreter at a parent meeting may leave the parent following only part of it.

Relay through Spanish, and how to book it

The pool of interpreters for any one Mixtec variety who also work into English is small. The realistic arrangement is often a relay — Mixtec–Spanish and Spanish–English, two interpreters each billed per hour, with each exchange taking about twice as long. It is better to book a relay with an interpreter from the client’s own area than a direct interpreter from a variety the client cannot follow. We confirm which arrangement we can staff, and the interpreter’s variety, before you book.

Mixtec is a rare language

Only a handful of qualified Mixtec 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 Mixtec 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.

• Glottolog 5.3 (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology) — Mixtec family
• SIL / ISO 639-3 Registration Authority — code mix, Mixtepec Mixtec
• Indigenous Farmworker Study (CRLA) — Final report, Section II: origins, routes to California and settlement (2010)
• Indigenous Farmworker Study (CRLA) — Final report, Section V: language and culture (2010)
• Indigenous Farmworker Study — Mixtec language pages 1–3 (San Juan Mixtepec, Candelaria de la Unión, San Juan Piñas)
• U.S. Census Bureau — Detailed Languages Spoken at Home, 2009–2013 ACS, Table 1 (2015)

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