By As part of every immigration application, immigrants are required to provide official documents to verify who they are. These documents include legal forms like their birth certificate or marriage records. However, if these documents are not in English, the immigrant is required to submit a certified translation of the original document as part of their application.
Here’s your chance to learn more about how the translation of documents for immigrants works and how you can translate a legal document to immigration.
How Do Language Barriers Affect Immigrants?
The paperwork involved in immigration can be complicated, but it is only made worse when the immigrant does not speak English fluently. US immigration laws require all documentation and paperwork as part of an immigrant’s application for citizenship to be in English.
If a vital document, like a birth record, is not in English, it must be translated by a certified translator. If any single document within the immigration application is not in English or is missing a certification from a translator, the entire application can be rejected.
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) offers translated documents that provide information about basic services and commonly asked questions, but the documents are not available in every language. If an immigrant needs additional help beyond those basic pieces of information, there are no further translation services available from the USCIS.
For many potential immigrants, this language barrier has made immigration impossible. While they have the will and need to immigrate, they don’t have the necessary language skills to correctly understand or fill out the application.
What Documents Need to Be Translated?
According to the USCIS, all applications and documents must be in English. It is the responsibility of the applicant to provide an accurate certified translation.
Most supporting documents and any necessary translation is typically part of the initial application. However, if the US government sends extra questions through a request for evidence (RFE), more documents may be required.
Immigrants should bring all original and translated documents to their official interview with the USCIS.
Documents that must be translated include:
- Birth certificate
- Marriage certificate
- Divorce papers
- Police records
- Bank statements
One document that does not need to be translated is an international passport.
Do You Have the Right to a Translator?
While the USCIS does not prohibit translators, they are also not provided. If an immigrant knows that they cannot understand English, it is their responsibility to provide a translator.
How Can a Legal Office Help?
Immigration lawyers and other legal professionals that specialize in immigration serve as a professional team that understands all of the ins and outs of the immigration bureaucracy. With this assistance, their clients can maneuver safely and quickly through the application process.
A legal office may use translation software like SYSTRAN to help with translation. Paired with a certified translator, SYSTRAN can speed up the translation process.
SYSTRAN is the most advanced machine translation software on the market and can translate in over 50 languages by using a neural machine network powered by AI.
Even though SYSTRAN can provide fast and accurate translations, it isn’t alive and can’t serve as a certified translator for the USCIS. However, a legal office can use SYSTRAN in conjunction with a certified translator. SYSTRAN makes translation more accurate and precise thus making a translator’s life much easier. Additionally, SYSTRAN can translate websites – making your website more accessible and accurate.
SYSTRAN starts by providing the initial translation of the document. The certified translator then verifies the translation, fixes any errors, and certifies it as their own.
Using SYSTRAN as the first step reduces the amount of time a translator has to work on each document and removes a large portion of the manual labor required. The translator can then focus on the smaller details and ensure that the translated document has the same meaning, voice, and style as the initial document rather than wasting their time translating basic words and phrases.
Learn How SYSTRAN Can Help
With over 50 years of experience, SYSTRAN is the industry leader in machine translation. We provide the most advanced AI-powered machine translation solution that can work in every field, from legal translation to localization.
Contact us today to see how SYSTRAN can meet all of your translation needs.
