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Sylheti Interpreters

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

Sylheti speakers are routinely booked with Bengali interpreters, and many will not object

Can a Bengali interpreter cover a Sylheti speaker? Sometimes, but it should be a decision rather than a default: Glottolog lists Sylheti as a language in its own right within the Eastern Bengali group, and the SOAS Sylheti Project in London describes it as dismissed as a “dialect” of Bengali since British colonial times. The same project writes of the shame attached to using Sylheti outside the home in any formal setting.

That shame is exactly what produces the wrong booking. Asked “Do you speak Bengali?”, a Sylheti speaker may well say yes, and then follow a standard-Bengali interpreter less well than anyone in the room realizes — in a hospital, a school meeting or an asylum interview. Ask instead which language the family speaks at home, and whether the client is from Sylhet; if the answer is Sylheti, ask for a Sylheti-speaking interpreter.

Official statistics will not tell you how many people that is. The Census Bureau has no Sylheti category: its 2009–2013 tables counted 105,765 Bengali speakers in the New York metro area and 12,110 in metropolitan Detroit, with Sylheti speakers somewhere inside those totals. India’s 2011 census likewise lists no separate Sylheti mother tongue in its Bengali group.

Sounds and numbers are where Sylheti and Bengali part ways

The SOAS project’s notes on Sylheti pronunciation describe a velar fricative [x] alternating with [k], [f] alternating with [p], and [s] and [z] alternating with the affricates [c] and [j], along with only five vowels and no long ones; it also notes how Bengali-influenced Sylheti has been losing some of these features. The project’s own news headline reads kita xobor, “what news”. Differences of this kind are where a standard-Bengali interpreter and a Sylheti speaker mishear each other.

Numbers deserve particular care. The project notes that Sylheti’s historical number words are being replaced by Bengali cognates, so pronunciations vary between speakers and generations. In testimony about ages, sums of money, dates and counts, the interpreter should repeat a number back for confirmation rather than rely on hearing it once. Dates can also come in the Bengali calendar: a community post the project reproduces gives the date as 1 Foush 1425 alongside 15 December 2018. When a client dates an event that way, the interpreter should give both forms, not convert silently.

Sylheti has its own script, but documents will be in Bengali

Sylheti has a script of its own, Syloti Nagri, proposed for Unicode in 2002 and now with its own Unicode block, and taught from the 1970s by a Sylhet professor who kept it alive. The SOAS project describes it as an endangered script now being revived — they say no one had practised Siloti Nagri calligraphy for probably fifty years. In practice, almost nothing a client brings will be written in it.

Bangladeshi civil documents, school records and medical letters are in standard Bengali. When one is read aloud, the interpreter is sight-translating from written Bengali and then speaking to the client in Sylheti — two steps, and the client may follow the Sylheti far better than the written original. Say in advance if documents will be read, so the interpreter can prepare names, places and dates.

Sylheti is a limited-availability language

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

• U.S. Census Bureau — Detailed Languages Spoken at Home, ACS 2009–2013 (nation and metro tables; Bengali)
• Glottolog 5.3 — Sylheti
• SOAS Sylheti Project — Brief history of language trends from Sylheti’s numbers (December 22, 2021)
• SOAS Sylheti Project — home page, including “Writing in the Siloti/Syloti/Sylheti Nagri script” (April 2026)
• SOAS Sylheti Project, SOAS University of London — About the project
• Unicode Consortium — Syloti Nagri code chart (U+A800–U+A82F)
• Office of the Registrar General, India — Census of India 2011, Paper 1 of 2018: Language (Table C-16)

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