Certified Translation for Green Card Applications

A Green Card case can bring together records issued by several countries, authorities, and periods of a person's life. Birth and marriage certificates may establish identity and family relationships, while divorce decrees, adoption records, police records, court documents, or employment evidence may support other parts of the filing.

When a foreign-language document is submitted to USCIS, the translation is not a summary of what the record means. It should be a full English translation of the document being used as evidence, so the adjudicator can compare the English version with the source.

USCIS rules require a full English translation for foreign-language documents submitted as evidence. The translator must certify that the translation is complete and accurate and that they are competent to translate from the source language into English.

That is different from notarization, apostille, or credential evaluation. Those services serve different purposes and should only be added when the relevant procedure or receiving authority requires them.

Green Card filings often contain documents created years apart and in different legal systems. A person's name may appear with or without accents, in a different order, under a former surname, or with a different transliteration on a passport and a civil record.

A translator should reproduce the source faithfully rather than change an old record to make it match a newer one. Where the source itself uses a particular spelling or format, the English translation should remain traceable to that source while staying consistent in how recurring names and terms are handled.

Marginal annotations, handwritten entries, stamps, seals, registration numbers, amendments, and reverse-side text can be relevant in immigration evidence. A complete translation should identify those elements rather than silently dropping them because they look administrative.

If part of the document is illegible, the translation should indicate that limitation instead of guessing. The aim is to give USCIS a transparent English rendering of the record that was actually submitted.

Birth certificates, marriage certificates, divorce decrees, adoption records, police or criminal records, court judgments, passports and identity records, employment letters, academic credentials, and other supporting documents may be translated depending on the basis of the individual filing.

The exact evidence required is case-specific. Applicants should follow the current USCIS instructions for their form and any requests issued in their case.