By The United States of America was founded on being a safe land for the tired, poor, tempest-tost, and suppressed yearning to breathe free. Idealistically, it’s a place for those who need refuge, seeking a place to call home and enjoy the freedom to live as they choose.
That dream is a reality for hundreds of thousands of naturalized citizens every year, but it isn’t as easy to attain as it once was.
Now, each immigrant must navigate a bureaucratic maze of applications and hearings to achieve their dream. This process is further complicated when dealing with the languages of the world and immigrants who are only fluent in their native tongue. That’s where the translation of immigration documents becomes vitally important.
Keep reading to learn more about translation in immigration and the automated translation options that can help streamline the immigration application process.
What You Need to Know about Translating Immigration Documents
Whether for a citizenship application, marriage green card, or DACA renewal, a wide range of documents is required as part of the immigration application process. For most immigration applications, a requirement exists for supporting personal documents to verify who an immigrant is, where they are from, and why they need legal status.
The complicated part with those legal personal documents is they are often written in another language and need to be accurately translated into English to be considered part of the immigration application.
For example, if an immigrant was required to include their birth certificate, but the certificate is in Spanish, they need to submit both the original Spanish version and a certified translation of the birth certificate in English
USCIS Certified Document Translation Requirements
Translated immigration documents must fill USCIS translation certification requirements to be considered accurate and applicable for immigration purposes. At the most basic level, the certification process verifies that the information between the original and translated documents is consistent and that no information has been omitted or changed.
Translated immigration documents also must include a certificate from the translator or a certified translation service. Otherwise, the documents cannot be considered part of the application. In most cases, an invalid translation is considered the same as not having the document at all, which quickly leads to the application being invalid or denied.
A translator does not need to be certified by the government or an external organization to provide a certified translation. All that is required in the certification statement is the following:
- A statement of the translator’s qualifications
- A statement affirming the completeness and accuracy of the document
- Identification of the translated document and language
- The translator’s name, signature, and date
By certifying a translated document, the translator legally verifies the translation is accurate. If any issues with the translation are discovered in the future, the translator is held liable for those inconsistencies.
How Can You Translate Immigration Documents?
If you’re looking to get a certified translation for immigration documents, your only option is to work with a translator. Automated translation services like Google Translate cannot provide the accurate translation and verification of complex legal documents required for immigration documents.
Machine translation cannot replace a skilled professional translator, but it can work in tandem with them. A certified translation only requires a translator to verify that the information in the original document has been translated accurately. It does not require the translator to perform the actual translation.
This means a machine translation application like SYSTRAN can perform the bulk of the translation, which can then be inspected by a human translator to ensure accuracy and completion.
SYSTRAN Can Help with Immigration Document Translation
If you are a professional translator, SYSTRAN can lighten the load and streamline your translation processes. SYSTRAN is the leading professional machine translation software with decades of experience in machine translation and utilizing both machine learning and artificial intelligence.
SYSTRAN can provide a highly accurate, nearly instant translation of any document, from which you simply verify its accuracy and make quick corrections to any errors in the translation.
If you’re an immigration lawyer or need certified translation services, SYSTRAN can also simplify your process. Rather than waiting for a translator to manually translate an essential document, you can create an accurate version of the document yourself that only needs to be certified by a translator. This can help you cut costs when working with translators and remove any downtime waiting for a translation to be completed.
Find out more about how you can efficiently translate immigration documents with SYSTRAN.
