Home / Shanghainese interpreting

Shanghainese Interpreters

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

Shanghainese and Mandarin are mutually unintelligible, but most Shanghainese speakers also speak Mandarin

Will a Mandarin interpreter do for a Shanghainese speaker? For most people educated in Shanghai in the last few decades, yes; for many elders, not well. Shanghainese belongs to the Wu branch of Chinese and is mutually unintelligible with Mandarin (Putonghua), though the two share a great deal, and Mandarin has been the language of the classroom long enough that a 1992 regulation urged Shanghai pupils to report one another for speaking Shanghainese at school.

That is why the Shanghainese requests we see are almost always for an older person: a parent who joined a child in the United States, a grandparent in hospital or rehabilitation, a guardianship or estate matter. They follow Mandarin on television and in a shop, and they describe symptoms, money and family in Shanghainese. Ask the family which language the person uses when tired or upset, and book for that.

Younger and older speakers do not speak quite the same Shanghainese

Shanghainese has some ten to fourteen million speakers, and a 2013 Yale study found its sound system changing among young speakers to become nearly identical to Mandarin's. Reporting from Shanghai in 2024 describes children learning Mandarin first and resisting the dialect, and older people feeling more at ease in it. An interpreter in their thirties who grew up speaking Shanghainese at home may speak a Mandarin-shaped urban variety that an eighty-year-old follows but does not speak.

The city's speech was also shaped by migration, notably from Suzhou in the 1920s, and Wu is spoken across the Yangtze delta and further south. A client “from near Shanghai” may speak another Wu variety altogether. Tell us the city or county, not only the province.

The pool is tiny, and a Mandarin interpreter told the situation is often the honest option

The 2009–2013 American Community Survey counted 2,670 people speaking Wu at home, about 1,200 of them in the New York metropolitan area. Most Shanghainese speakers probably answered “Chinese”, so the real number is larger, but the number of professional interpreters who work in Shanghainese is very small. Give as much lead time as you can.

Where no Shanghainese interpreter is free, a Mandarin interpreter who understands Shanghainese, briefed that the client may slip into it, is often the realistic arrangement, and relay is possible; we confirm whether we can staff it before you book. What we advise against is a grandchild filling the gap in a medical or legal appointment. Documents the client brings, such as household registration or notarial certificates, are in standard written Chinese and will be sight-translated, whatever language the conversation is in.

Shanghainese is a limited-availability language

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

• Laura Wellman, Yale University Department of Linguistics — Pudong and Putonghua: Sound Change and Language Shift in Shanghai (May 2013)
• Sixth Tone — Laugh in Translation: Shanghainese Comedy Stands Up to the Mainstream (May 17, 2024)
• Glottolog — Wu Chinese (classification within Sinitic)
• U.S. Census Bureau — Detailed Languages Spoken at Home, ACS 2009–2013 (October 2015)

Frequently asked questions

Related services

For firms and institutions

From the blog