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Urdu Interpreters

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

Urdu and Hindi diverge exactly where a hearing lives

Spoken casually, Urdu and Hindi are close enough that an interpreter in one can frequently manage the other. They diverge in the formal and legal register — Urdu draws that vocabulary from Persian and Arabic, Hindi from Sanskrit — and the formal register is precisely what a hearing, a deposition or a sworn statement uses. An interpreter who is comfortable in conversational Hindi may stall on the legal Urdu of a Pakistani court document.

They are also written in entirely different scripts: Urdu in Nastaliq, a Perso-Arabic script running right to left, Hindi in Devanagari running left to right. That matters for documents rather than for interpreting, but it is why a bilingual speaker may read one fluently and not the other at all — see our Urdu translation page.

Who is actually speaking Urdu in a US proceeding

Urdu is the national language of Pakistan and a first language for a minority of Pakistanis — most speak Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto or Balochi at home and use Urdu as the language of school, court and official life. So a Pakistani applicant may be entirely competent in Urdu for formal purposes and more precise in another language when describing what happened to them.

It is also widely spoken by Indian Muslims, particularly from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Hyderabad, and by the diaspora from both countries. Ask what the person uses at home before assuming Urdu is the right booking; if the answer is Punjabi or Pashto, book that instead.

Urdu is a standard-availability language

Urdu is one of the languages we can normally staff within the week, including for in-person work in most metropolitan areas, and it is priced at the standard rate with no availability surcharge.

Short notice is still worth flagging when you enquire. A next-day virtual assignment is usually possible; a next-day in-person assignment outside a major city frequently is not, and we will say so rather than accept and hope.

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.

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, depositions and signings.

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.

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.

How it works

Upload a photo or a scan of your document, pick the language pair and check out online. You never have to mail originals: a legible copy is all we need.

A professional human translator, never machine translation, translates the document word for word and mirrors the layout of the original. Every certified translation ships with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy that meets the requirements of USCIS, courts and universities.

Your translation is delivered digitally, usually within 24 hours for documents of one to three pages, and same-day delivery is available. If anything needs adjusting, we revise it.

Frequently asked questions

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