Home / Q’anjob’al interpreting

Q’anjob’al Interpreters

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

Q’anjob’al speakers are routinely booked in Spanish, and the court file may say “Konjobal”

Can a Spanish interpreter cover a Q’anjob’al speaker? Usually not: Q’anjob’al is a Mayan language of the Cuchumatanes mountains of Huehuetenango, unrelated to Spanish, and many speakers — children especially — arrive with little Spanish. Immigration court records spell it “Konjobal”, and it has climbed their rankings: the 23rd most common language of completed cases in fiscal 2015, the 20th in 2016 and the 16th in 2017.

The cost of getting it wrong is concrete. The New York Times reported in 2019 on a Q’anjob’al speaker in San Diego whose asylum hearing had been delayed more than a year because no interpreter was available, and on a hearing in which a woman appeared to understand little of what her Q’anjob’al interpreter said. For anything that is going on the record — a declaration, an asylum interview, a hearing — book Q’anjob’al, and treat a client’s “my Spanish is fine” with caution.

Q’anjob’al, Akateko and Popti’ are neighbors, not substitutes

Q’anjob’al’s closest relatives are spoken in neighboring Huehuetenango towns: Akateko (San Miguel Acatán, San Rafael La Independencia) and Popti’, also called Jakalteko (around Jacaltenango). They are separate languages, and the resemblance is exactly why they get confused. Immigration court data analyzed by TRAC records Akateko speakers as “Western Konjobal”, so a file that says Kanjobal may describe an Akateko speaker, and an interpreter booked from the label alone may be the wrong one.

Ask the client’s hometown. Q’anjob’al’s own heartland is four municipalities — San Juan Ixcoy, San Pedro Soloma, Santa Eulalia and Santa Cruz Barillas — and speakers often name them in Q’anjob’al: Yich K’ox, Tz’uluma’, Jolom Konob’ and Yal Motx. A client who says “Jolom Konob’” is telling you they are from Santa Eulalia. Guatemala’s 2018 census counted 166,261 people who learned Q’anjob’al first, 152,500 of them in Huehuetenango.

Florida, Los Angeles and beyond, since the 1980s

Q’anjob’al migration to the United States began in the civil-war years. Anthropologist Allan Burns documented the community in Maya in Exile (1993): a group of Kanjobal Maya brought to Indiantown, Florida, in late 1982 to work citrus groves and farms, and by the book’s account Indiantown came to have some 4,000 to 5,000 Maya. NPR found the next generation in 2014 at the Guatemalan-Maya Center in Lake Worth, Florida: a 16-year-old who had grown up speaking Q’anjob’al, for whom both English and Spanish were new languages.

A Catholic Church survey of Guatemala’s languages lists Los Angeles as the main US community, with large ones in Florida, Nebraska and Arizona. In practice the requests come from immigration counsel preparing children’s and families’ cases, from schools enrolling newcomer students, and from clinics and legal aid in farm-working towns.

Relay through Spanish is common, and names are written in two alphabets

Many interpreters of Mayan languages work between their language and Spanish, not English, and the Times described immigration hearings running English to Spanish to the Mayan language and back. A relay uses two interpreters, each billed per hour, and each exchange takes about twice as long. Whether a direct Q’anjob’al–English interpreter is available or the realistic option is a relay depends on the date, and we confirm which before you book.

Spellings vary: older texts, including some Bibles, write Q’anjob’al with Spanish-style c and qu where the current alphabet uses k. Q’anjob’al also has the letter xh, pronounced like a soft “ch”. Personal and place names may therefore appear in more than one form across a file, and an interpreter should state the variants once on the record rather than leave them looking like discrepancies.

Q’anjob’al is a rare language

Only a handful of qualified Q’anjob’al 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 Q’anjob’al 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. Department of Justice, EOIR — Statistics Yearbook FY 2017, Table 9: initial case completions by top 25 languages (2018)
• Instituto Nacional de Estadística Guatemala — Censo 2018, tables 06 and 07 (Maya linguistic community; language first learned)
• TRAC, Syracuse University — 40 Languages Spoken Among Asylum Seekers with Pending MPP Cases (2021)
• Iglesia Católica de Guatemala, Bernard Gosse — Biblioteca de las lenguas de Guatemala: otras lenguas mayas
• NPR Code Switch — Language Barriers Pose Challenges for Mayan Migrant Children (2014)
• The New York Times (Jennifer Medina), via WRAL — Anyone Speak K’iche’ or Mam? Immigration Courts Overwhelmed by Indigenous Languages (2019)
• Cultural Survival — Maya in Exile: Guatemalans in Florida (on Allan Burns’s 1993 book)

Frequently asked questions

Related services

For firms and institutions

From the blog