About
Language access works when the interpreter shows up and stays.
Minnesota has one of the most linguistically diverse populations in the country and language-access obligations to match. Hospitals, courts, school districts, and social-services agencies have been required to provide qualified interpreters for decades. Most still coordinate those sessions by phone, text, and spreadsheet. Lingfaro replaces that with a platform that dispatches in real time, documents each completed session, and pays interpreters every other Friday.
Founded 2019 · Minneapolis Migrant-owned On-site · video · phone
The name
Lingfaro
/lɪŋˈfɑːroʊ/ nounling·FAH·roh
1. The Minnesota-built platform that dispatches vetted interpreters to the institutions that need them, documents every completed session, and pays interpreters on a regular weekly/biweekly cycle via direct deposit.
2. figurative. A guiding light across a language barrier; whatever makes meaning arrive intact when the words don't match.
How we got here
Built documentation-first, deliberately.
We're early, and we'd rather tell you exactly where we are than dress it up.
- Why
The problem we kept hitting
Between us, years of interpreting through agencies that paid late, matched badly, and kept no record worth the name. Minnesota — one of the most linguistically diverse states in the country — deserved better infrastructure.
- Build
Documentation and dispatch, first
We started with the hardest part: matching the closest qualified interpreter and producing a tamper-evident record every session. On-site, video, and phone from the start.
- Pay
Fair pay, in writing
Our pay commitment is written into the interpreter agreement — most of every dollar reaches the interpreter, itemized in their ledger. Mileage and prep time included.
- Now
Onboarding interpreters statewide
We're actively credentialing interpreters across the languages Minnesota needs — Somali, Hmong, Karen, Spanish, Amharic, and more — and accepting early institutional partners.
What we believe
Three things we won't negotiate on.
- 01
Community trust comes first.
A Somali patient misunderstanding their diagnosis. A Karen family missing what's said in an IEP meeting. A refugee misreading the terms of their benefits. Each is a trust failure, and trust failures are how institutions lose the communities they serve. Lingfaro is built to get the right interpreter to the right session, reliably.
- 02
Interpreter fairness is operational, not aspirational.
Daily caps. Rate floors. Posted rates. Direct deposit within 1–2 business days. No exclusivity. No informal penalty for declining an offer. Built into the platform, not buried in a contract addendum.
- 03
Institutional reliability requires evidence.
When a Joint Commission surveyor, an OCR investigator, or a CMS reviewer asks for utilization records, the answer shouldn't be a clipboard. Every Lingfaro session produces a documented record an auditor can read without specialist tools: interpreter credentials, timestamps, dual attestation.
What Lingfaro is
A platform, not an agency.
Lingfaro does not employ interpreters. Institutional clients post a request, vetted interpreters accept the work, and the platform handles dispatch, session documentation, billing, and payouts. Interpreters set their own availability within published rate bands. Clients see every dispatch attempt and every session record.
Our revenue is a transparent platform fee on each completed session. We don't sell data, run behavioral advertising, gate basic features behind premium tiers, or upsell. The fee is what it is.
Standards
Written down, not whispered.
Five things we will not bend on. They're in the interpreter agreement, in our master service agreements, and on this page. Matching is automated; the standards behind it are human, and written down.
- §1
Faithfulness over fluency
We deliver what was said, in the register it was said — even when a smoother version would be easier to hear.
- §2
Practitioner before platform
If an interpreter tells us a feature creates a failure mode, we don't ship it.
- §3
Pay the interpreter first
Most of every dollar reaches the interpreter — itemized in their ledger, where it's earned, not printed on a billboard.
- §4
Humans on the line
Matching is automated, but a real person is always reachable — in shift, with a name. The support number is not a maze.
- §5
The record is the work
Every session generates a tamper-evident record by default. We assume the institution will be asked to prove it.
Founders
Who's behind Lingfaro.
Sabah Yusuf
Co-Founder & CEO
Sabah has spent more than 20 years interpreting in Minnesota hospitals, courtrooms, and school districts. She has seen firsthand how a missed or unqualified interpreter turns into a missed diagnosis, a continued hearing, or a family left out of a decision about their own child. Lingfaro is the system she wished existed on every one of those days: one that gets the right interpreter to the session and pays the people doing the work fairly.
Mohamed Hassan
Co-Founder & CTO
Mohamed is a principal product security engineer with more than a decade building and securing software for regulated, high-stakes industries. He leads Lingfaro's architecture and security: data minimization by design, tamper-evident session records, and the documentation hospitals, courts, and agencies can hand to an auditor without a week of manual work.
Where we are
Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded 2019.
Lingfaro is a migrant-owned, Minnesota-built business, founder-led by people who have done the interpreting work and built the systems that support it. We serve the Twin Cities metro and Greater Minnesota, and we know this market because we are part of it.
Compliance paperwork, on request
- BAA · HIPAA entities
- DPA · state & county
- ORR subcontract
- Procurement packet
Want to talk to a human?
We respond to every message from a real person within one business day.
Contact us