Birth Certificate Translation for a Green Card Application

If your birth certificate is not in English, your green card filing needs a complete English translation of it with a signed certificate of accuracy from the translator. That includes the printed fields, the registrar's seal, the revenue stamps, the registry book and page numbers, and any handwritten note in the margin. USCIS works from 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3), which asks for a full translation certified as complete and accurate by someone competent in the language pair. A partial translation of the obvious fields is the single most common reason a birth certificate comes back with a Request for Evidence.

Which green card forms ask for a birth certificate

The birth certificate shows up more than once in most family based cases.

Form I-130, the Petition for Alien Relative, uses it to prove the relationship being claimed. A parent petitioning for a child, a child petitioning for a parent, and a sibling petition all rest on birth certificates naming the same parents.

Form I-485, the Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status, asks for the applicant's own birth certificate as identity evidence.

If your case goes through consular processing instead, the National Visa Center collects the same civil documents before the interview, and Form DS-260 is filed against them.

Every one of those copies needs the English translation attached to it. You translate the certificate once and use the same certified translation across the filing.

Long form versus short form, and why the short one gets sent back

USCIS wants the version of the record that names both parents. Many countries issue a short extract that carries only the person's name and date of birth, and that version cannot prove a parent child relationship no matter how well it is translated.

The distinction has a local name almost everywhere.

In France, the copie intégrale d'acte de naissance is the full copy, while the extrait sans filiation deliberately omits the parents.

In Italy, the estratto per riassunto is a summary and the copia integrale dell'atto di nascita is the complete record.

In Spain, the certificación literal is the full transcription and the certificación en extracto is the short one.

In Germany, the current full document is the beglaubigter Ausdruck aus dem Geburtsregister, which replaced the older Abstammungsurkunde.

In Brazil and Portugal, the certidão de nascimento carries the livro, folha and termo registry references that USCIS expects to see rendered in the translation.

In the Netherlands, an uittreksel uit de basisregistratie personen may or may not include parents depending on which extract you request.

In Turkey, the nüfus kayıt örneği from the civil registry shows parents, and the doğum belgesi on its own often does not.

The Department of State publishes a Reciprocity Schedule listing which civil documents each country issues and which version is treated as acceptable. Check the entry for your country of birth before you order anything, because ordering a translation of the wrong extract wastes the money twice.

Everything on the certificate gets translated

A birth certificate is a dense object. Alongside the fields, it typically carries a round registrar's seal, a signature block, a revenue or tax stamp, a security watermark with text in it, a certificate serial number, and marginal annotations that record later events such as a marriage, a divorce, a legitimation, an adoption or a legal name change.

Those annotations matter enormously and are routinely skipped by inexperienced translators. A marginal note recording a name change is often the only document that explains why the name on the birth certificate does not match the name on the passport. Leave it out and you have created a discrepancy in your own file.

Where text is genuinely unreadable, the translation marks it illegible rather than inventing something. Where a seal is circular, the translation says so and renders the words inside it. Nothing is summarized and nothing is silently dropped.

Formatting matters more than people expect

An officer holds the original next to the translation and looks for the same information in the same place. A translation that reflows a structured record into flat paragraphs makes that comparison slow, and slow comparisons produce questions.

Our certified translations preserve the layout. Tables stay tables, field labels stay next to their values, and seals and stamps are shown where they sit on the original. The whole process from upload to delivery is described on how it works.

The details that most often go wrong are small and specific. Dates written 03/04/1990 mean 3 April 1990 across all of continental Europe and Turkey, and converting them the American way turns them into 4 March 1990. Diacritics have to survive, so Turkish ş, ğ and ı, German ä, ö, ü and ß, and Portuguese ã and ç all carry through, because the name has to match the passport character for character. Spanish records carry two surnames, the paternal first and the maternal second, and dropping the second one creates a name that no longer matches Form I-130.

The languages we cover for civil records

We work in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch and Turkish, in every direction between them. That covers birth certificates from Mexico, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela and Spain, from France, Belgium, Senegal and Haiti, from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, from Italy, from Brazil, Portugal, Angola and Cape Verde, from the Netherlands and Suriname, and from Turkey. The full list is on the languages page.

What it costs and how fast it comes back

Certified translation is 24.95 per page, where a page is up to 250 words of actual text rather than a physical sheet. Most single birth certificates come in at one or two pages by that measure, so a typical certificate is 24.95 or 49.90. Delivery is 2 to 3 business days.

If you have an interview date or a Request for Evidence deadline coming up, Premium is 39.95 per page and comes back in 1 to 2 business days. Standard at 19.95 per page does not include the certificate of accuracy, so it is not the right service for a green card filing. The three levels are compared on our services page.

You upload a PDF, the word count is measured from the real document, and the price is shown before you pay. A single order handles up to 50 pages, which is more than enough for a whole set of civil documents, and if your filing is larger you can contact us for a quote.

If the birth certificate does not exist

Some people cannot obtain one. Records were destroyed, the birth was never registered, or the country stopped issuing that document. USCIS has a route for that involving a certificate of non availability from the issuing authority together with secondary evidence such as baptismal records, school records, medical records or affidavits from people with direct knowledge.

All of those substitute documents need the same treatment. If they are not in English, they need a full certified translation, and a non availability certificate itself is usually a foreign language document that has to be translated. What USCIS will accept in place of a birth certificate is a question for USCIS or an immigration attorney rather than for us, and the officer reviewing your file has the final word.

If a translation is rejected

We stand behind our own work. If a translation is rejected because of a translation error we made, we correct it at no charge, and if the corrected translation is rejected again for that same error we refund what was paid for it, on notice within 30 days with the written rejection. The full terms are in our refund policy. If anyone needs to confirm a certificate we issued is genuine, they can check it at our verification page.

Get your birth certificate translated

Upload the PDF, pick the language pair, and see the exact price before paying. Start an order and your certified translation will be ready when your filing is.