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Quechua Interpreters

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

Quechua is a family of varieties, and the country and province decide who can interpret

Can any Quechua interpreter cover any Quechua speaker? No: Quechua is a family of varieties that has been diverging for well over a thousand years, and the most divergent of them are now mutually unintelligible; linguists have compared the spread to the distance between Spanish and Portuguese, or Spanish and French. Ecuadorian Kichwa, the Quechua of Cusco and Puno, that of Ayacucho and the central Peruvian varieties of Áncash and Huánuco are not one booking.

Peru alone has 3,735,682 people whose first language is Quechua, 13.9 percent of the population aged five and over in the 2017 census, and it is the majority mother tongue in Apurímac (70.8 percent), Huancavelica (65.2 percent), Ayacucho (63.6 percent) and Cusco (55.2 percent). Tell us the country and the province or department; for Ecuador, the province. An interpreter from one end of the family may follow a speaker from the other end only partly, and partly is not enough for an asylum interview.

Quechua speakers in US proceedings are easily recorded as Spanish speakers

Among 29,423 cases pending in the Migrant Protection Protocols in January 2021, immigration court records listed eight Quechua speakers, all from Ecuador, and TRAC, which analyzed them, warned that Indigenous-language speakers may be undercounted and recorded as Spanish speakers. The American Community Survey's figure of about 1,300 Quechua speakers nationwide says more about how the question is asked than about the community. In New York, legal service providers list Kichwa from Ecuador among the Indigenous languages whose speakers often speak neither English nor Spanish fluently.

Many Quechua speakers are bilingual and will answer in Spanish if Spanish is what the room offers. Whether that is good enough for a medical history or a persecution account is for the client to say, and they need to be asked in a way that makes “no” an acceptable answer. The usual arrangement in court is relay, English to Spanish to Quechua and back, because many Indigenous-language interpreters do not work in English. The pool is small and tied to particular varieties; we confirm whether we can staff your variety and date before you book.

Quechua grammar marks how the speaker knows, and many speakers do not read

Quechua marks evidence in the grammar: a suffix on the sentence tells you whether the speaker saw something directly or is reporting what others said. In testimony that is the line between eyewitness account and hearsay, and an interpreter who renders both as plain statements has changed the evidence. Brief the interpreter that this matters, and expect phrases like “they say” or “I saw it myself” to carry weight.

In Peru's 2017 census, 16.5 percent of people aged fifteen and over whose mother tongue is Quechua could not read or write. A written declaration may mean nothing on paper to the person who gave it, whatever language it is in. Plan on reading documents aloud — Spanish or English sight-translated into the client's variety — and allow the time for it.

Quechua is a limited-availability language

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

• INEI Perú — Perú: Perfil Sociodemográfico, Censos Nacionales 2017 (2018)
• Paul Heggarty, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology — Quechua Languages and "Dialects"
• WALS Online (Max Planck) — Semantic distinctions of evidentiality: Quechua (Imbabura)
• TRAC, Syracuse University — 40 Languages Spoken Among Asylum Seekers with Pending MPP Cases (2021)
• Brooklyn Defender Services, excerpting Documented — New York's Dire Need for Indigenous Interpreters (June 17, 2022)
• New York Times via WRAL — Anyone speak K'iche' or Mam? Immigration courts overwhelmed by Indigenous languages (March 19, 2019)

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