Our previous piece traced the tightening of US visa rules. Readers planning to study abroad, take up overseas postings or migrate have since asked which documents need translation, and what kind of translation officers accept. This piece sets out the material we handle every day, in three groups.
One: academic documents
This is the group students and visiting scholars use most: degree certificates, diplomas, transcripts and enrolment letters, along with awards and examination certificates. The key is completeness — course titles, credits, length of study and award dates, with standard renderings of institution and programme names. For transcripts we keep a course-by-course correspondence that helps a receiving school assess credits.
Two: identity and family documents
These are common for dependant visas and family migration: medical birth certificates, marriage certificates, household registers, notarised kinship statements and police-clearance certificates. The critical point is consistent identity information: the English rendering of a person’s name on a birth certificate, household register and marriage certificate must be identical, and must match the passport and visa form, such as the DS-160. Dates follow one English convention throughout to avoid day-month-year ambiguity.
Three: employment and financial documents
Work visas and investment migration involve employment and income letters, assignment letters, business licences, bank statements, tax records, property deeds and vehicle registrations. Numbers are the defining feature here: amounts, dates and account references are checked individually; company names and job titles are aligned with US-side documents such as invitation letters and I-129 petitions, which saves explanation later.
Our method: every page matches
All material follows our certified translation standard: the translation corresponds to the original page by page, with a layout that reproduces the original as closely as possible, a translator’s certificate and the translation stamp, which is widely accepted by universities, consulates and immigration reviewers. Before work begins we build an information sheet fixing name spellings, dates of birth, schools and companies, and use them consistently across the set; each new document is checked against the passport and application forms, and any mismatch is raised with the client.
When time is short
In the busy visa season, many clients are held up by late admission letters or I-20 forms. We offer a fast track: standard certificates within one working day, and a full set — usually six to ten documents — scheduled backwards from the interview date. We also supply a document comparison sheet so the file can be checked before the interview and nothing is left behind.
If you have material in hand, send the visa category, document list and interview date through the contact page and we will propose an approach. For the background, see “The Pause Button on Green Cards: Why Visa Documents Cannot Be Improvised”, and “Certified Documents Allow Zero Error: Five Skills for the Work” takes the translator’s view.