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Interpreters for Immigration Attorney Meetings

Most of an immigration case is built in the attorney's office, not at the hearing: the consultation, the declaration, the read-back before signing, the preparation for questions. The court provides an interpreter for the hearing; nobody provides one for those meetings. Here is what that work asks of an interpreter and how a firm or a client books one with us.

Who arranges the interpreter for attorney meetings

Start with what the government covers, so nobody pays twice. Immigration courts provide interpreters at government expense, through staff, contract or telephone interpreters, for people who cannot fully participate in English, and the respondent or attorney should request one at least 30 days before the hearing (EOIR Policy Manual 3.10). That section is about the hearings. Meetings between a client and their lawyer happen outside the court, and in practice the firm or the client arranges the interpreter for them.

For an affirmative asylum interview at USCIS it is the applicant who must bring the interpreter, and the regulation says the applicant's attorney or representative of record may not be that interpreter (8 CFR 208.9(g)). A bilingual attorney therefore cannot double as the interpreter on the day, though they can prepare the client in the language.

Who books us: immigration firms whose staff do not speak the client's language, or who would rather not pull a bilingual paralegal into a four-hour declaration; nonprofit legal programs with clients in many languages; and clients who want an interpreter they chose for meetings with their lawyer.

What attorney work asks of an interpreter

• Consultations and intake. Consecutive interpreting of an unstructured conversation: entries, exits, arrests, prior applications, family relationships. The lawyer needs exact answers, not the gist.
• Declaration drafting. Long narrative in the first person, with dates, places and names that will be checked against the client's documents and testimony later. Hours, not minutes.
• Reading the draft back. The interpreter renders the English declaration into the client's language aloud so the client can correct it before signing. That is sight translation, and it should be done from the final draft, line by line.
• Going through documents. The interpreter can tell the lawyer what a foreign-language document says so the meeting can continue. That is not a substitute for a certified written translation of anything that will be filed.
• Preparing for the interview or hearing. Practice questioning, often in the style of cross-examination, so the client is used to answering through an interpreter at the pace the real one will set.

Where declarations go wrong

The common failure is summary. The client speaks for two minutes and the interpreter renders twenty seconds in the third person: "he says they threatened him." The lawyer writes what they heard, and the details that carry the claim — who, what was said, how often, what happened next — never reach the page. An interpreter in this setting has to render everything in the first person, ask the lawyer for a pause when the client runs long, and never fill a gap with what the client probably meant.

Dates and names are the second failure. Clients from countries with other calendars may give dates in the Persian or Ethiopian calendar, or by season and age rather than by year; the interpreter renders what was said, and the lawyer converts and confirms. Names of people, towns and organizations need one agreed spelling across the declaration, the forms and the evidence. And the read-back cannot be skipped: a declaration the client signed but never heard in their own language is one they may contradict at the interview without knowing it.

Running the meeting

• Speak to the client, in the first person. The interpreter does the same; "ask him whether" invites a side conversation.
• No side conversations. The interpreter does not chat with the client while the lawyer is out of the room, and does not answer legal questions; anything the client asks is put to the lawyer.
• Use the same interpreter across sessions when you can, and the same terms for the same things: the name of the group, the place, the event.
• Send a short glossary in advance: the client's name and family names as spelled in their documents, places, organizations, and any terms the lawyer will use repeatedly.
• Schedule the read-back as its own block of time, not the last fifteen minutes of a long session.

Booking for a firm or a client

Most attorney meetings work by video or phone: $80 an hour per interpreter with a one-hour minimum, no travel. A three-hour declaration session is $240; the read-back of a long declaration is often a second session. In person is $110 an hour with a two-hour minimum, plus travel at $0.70 per mile from the interpreter's location, confirmed before you book: a six-hour day of hearing preparation at the office is $660 plus travel. A full day of sustained interpreting may need two interpreters working in relay, and we will say so when you request.

For a meeting at a detention facility, tell us the facility; its visiting and access rules apply, and we confirm whether we can staff it before you book. Firms with a steady caseload in several languages can see eVerbary for law firms; the documents themselves are certified translation at $24.95 per page.

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 21, 2026. Rules change; the source is always the authority.

• EOIR Policy Manual, Immigration Court Practice Manual — 3.10 Interpreters (Department of Justice)
• 8 CFR 208.9(g) — Interpreters at the asylum interview (eCFR, current)
• USCIS — Instructions for Form I-589, Application for Asylum and for Withholding of Removal (edition 07/28/26)

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