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Interpreters for Funerals and Memorial Services

A death puts a family in front of a funeral director, a price list and a dozen decisions within a day or two, and then in front of everyone who came to say goodbye. When the family or half the mourners do not speak English, language help is needed in both places. Here is what the funeral home must give you, how to interpret a service, and how to book an interpreter at short notice.

Does the funeral home have to provide an interpreter?

We found no rule that requires a funeral home to provide an interpreter, and we do not claim one. Some funeral homes have staff who speak the family's language, and some will arrange an interpreter for the arrangements conference — ask when you call. Otherwise the family arranges it, or the congregation, or the funeral home on the family's behalf.

What federal law does require is paperwork that a family has to understand. Under the FTC's Funeral Rule, a funeral home must give a printed general price list to anyone who inquires in person, as soon as the discussion turns to prices, the type of service or specific goods and services, and at the end of the arrangements it must give an itemized written statement of what was selected (16 CFR 453.2(b)(4) and (b)(5)). It may not say that embalming is required by law when it is not, and its price list must carry a disclosure that, except in certain special cases, embalming is not required by law (16 CFR 453.3(a)). A family that cannot read those documents has not had the benefit of them, which is why the arrangements conference is the meeting most worth interpreting.

The arrangements conference

The funeral director goes through the general price list, the casket and outer burial container price lists, the choice between burial and cremation, viewing, the service, the obituary and the cemetery or crematory. The interpreter renders the director's explanations and reads the price list aloud in the family's language, line by line, by sight translation; that is slow, and a family making decisions under grief should not be rushed through it. Ask the director to explain which items are required and which are optional, and have the interpreter render the answer in full. The itemized statement at the end should be read back in the family's language before anyone signs it.

This meeting works well by video or phone. Several relatives can join from different places, including relatives abroad who have a say in the decisions, and an interpreter by Zoom, Meet, Teams or phone is $80 for the first hour with no travel. Faith traditions that require burial within a day or two, specific washing or preparation of the body, or no embalming should be raised at the start; the interpreter renders the family's requests, but the funeral director is the one who explains what can be done.

Interpreting the service

• The officiant's words are interpreted consecutively, a sentence or two at a time, with the interpreter standing beside the officiant. That roughly doubles the time; plan the order of service for it, or keep the interpreted parts to the essentials.
• A bilingual service is often better than interpreting everything: readings and prayers said once in each language by different readers, a printed program in both languages prepared in advance, and the interpreter for the parts said only once.
• Eulogies are personal and hard to interrupt. Ask speakers for their text or notes beforehand, so the interpreter can render a eulogy in larger passages without losing it.
• A few relatives who do not speak the language of the service can sit together with the interpreter, who whispers the service to them simultaneously; no equipment is needed.
• The graveside is outdoors, without microphones, often in wind or traffic noise. Keep the group close and the interpreter beside the officiant.
• Relatives watching a livestream from abroad can have a virtual interpreter on the same video call, interpreting for them.

When the death or the burial crosses a border

When someone dies in the United States and is to be buried in their home country, the funeral home works with that country's consulate on the documents and the transport, and families often need an interpreter for those calls as much as for the service. When the death happens abroad and the remains come to the United States, federal rules require remains imported for burial or cremation to go directly to a licensed mortuary, cemetery or crematory and, unless embalmed, to be accompanied by a death certificate or an importer's statement (42 CFR 71.55).

A foreign death certificate needed in English for an estate, an insurance claim or a US authority is a written translation: death certificate translation, $24.95 per page certified.

Booking an interpreter for a funeral

Funerals are arranged in days, not weeks. Send the request as soon as the date and place are known, even provisionally; we will confirm whether we can staff it before you book, and say so plainly if a language or a date is not possible. In person is $110 per interpreter per hour with a two-hour minimum: visitation, service and burial from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. is 4 × $110 = $440, plus travel at $0.70 per mile from the interpreter's location, confirmed before you book; if the cemetery is 15 miles from the funeral home, that leg is part of the same calculation. A one-hour arrangements conference by video is $80.

Send with the request the place and time of each part of the day, the order of service and any readings or prayers that will be said, the names of the deceased and of the family as they should be pronounced, the faith tradition, and the dress expected. The interpreter is there to work, not to mourn; tell us where they should stand or sit, and when they are not needed.

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.

Languages

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.

Each language has its own page on what to watch for — dialects, names, dates, who the speakers usually are: see interpreters by language.

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 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

What this page says about the rules was checked against these official sources on October 28, 2026. Rules change; the source is always the authority.

• 16 CFR Part 453 — Federal Trade Commission, Funeral Industry Practices (the Funeral Rule) (eCFR)
• 16 CFR 453.2 — Price disclosures: general price list and itemized statement of goods and services selected (eCFR)
• 16 CFR 453.3 — Misrepresentations: embalming provisions (eCFR)
• 42 CFR 71.55 — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, importation of human remains (eCFR)

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