Arabic to English
Certified Passport Translation, Arabic to English
A certified Arabic to English translation of a passport costs $24.95 per page, where one page is up to 250 words of the source document. A typical passport runs 1 to 4 pages, so most orders come to $24.95 to $99.80. Certified orders are delivered in 2 to 3 business days as a PDF containing the complete translation and a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy from the qualified professional translator who completed or reviewed the work, prepared for official use including USCIS filings.
Pricing
Exact prices, shown before you pay
The biographic data page is one page; visa and stamp pages, when a receiver asks for them, add a page or more per set of pages. Certified translation is $24.95 per page, so a typical order of 1 to 4 pages comes to $24.95 to $99.80. The exact total is measured from your document and shown before payment.
Standard
$19.95 per page
3 to 5 business days
A professional translation with digital delivery.
Certified
$24.95 per page
2 to 3 business days
A certified translation accepted for official use.
Premium
$39.95 per page
1 to 2 business days
A certified translation, translated first.
One page is up to 250 words.
Requirements
What reviewers require for a certified passport translation
- Any document containing foreign language submitted to USCIS must be accompanied by a full English language translation which the translator has certified as complete and accurate, together with the translator's certification that he or she is competent to translate from the foreign language into English (8 CFR 103.2(b)(3)).
- For consular processing through the National Visa Center, documents not written in English or in the official language of the country of application must carry a certified translation that includes a statement signed by the translator affirming the translation is accurate and the translator is competent to translate.
- In immigration court, the translator certification must be signed and printed legibly or typed, must state the translator is competent to translate the document, and must state the translation is accurate (8 CFR 1003.33).
- Every visible element of the translated pages is rendered: biographic data fields, issuing-authority text, observations and amendments, and handwritten entries; nothing is summarized or skipped.
- Seals, stamps, emblems, and signatures are identified in bracketed descriptions and any text inside them is translated, for example [round seal: Ministry of Internal Affairs].
- Personal names follow the Latin-alphabet spelling already printed in the passport, including the coded lines at the bottom of the data page, so the translation matches the spelling used across the rest of the filing.
- The two lines of code at the bottom of the data page (the MRZ) are not translated as text; standard practice is to label them as the passport's coded data.
Common reasons translations get rejected
- Translating only the biographic page when the officer or an RFE asked for the full passport, including visa and stamp pages, leaves the request unanswered and can trigger a follow-up RFE.
- Summary or extract translations do not meet the full-translation requirement; the regulation calls for a full English language translation.
- Name spellings that differ from the passport's own Latin transliteration or from other translated documents in the same filing raise identity-consistency questions with adjudicators.
- Non-Gregorian dates copied without a Gregorian equivalent create apparent date-of-birth mismatches against other filed documents.
- Untranslated stamps, handwritten amendments, or observations pages leave foreign-language content in the filing, which the regulation does not permit.
Good to know
About Arabic-language passports
Egyptian passports do not separate given names from surnames, and the passport number is 8 digits preceded by a letter. Because USCIS and other US agencies match names to the passport, a translator uses the passport's Latin-letter spelling and name order when translating an Egyptian certificate for the same person, and translates Arabic-only endorsements and observations pages when they are supplied.
Jordanian passports may show a family or tribal name in brackets, which is not part of the holder's official name, and print the mother's name, which is also not part of the holder's name; long names are shortened to the first name, middle initials and surname. Lebanese passports do not show the father's forename, Saudi passports do not show a place of birth, and Kuwaiti passports abbreviate the father's and grandfather's names. A translator follows the passport spelling for the parts that appear in it and translates the civil record's full name chain as written, without adding or removing names.
Official Arabic-language civil records come from each country's civil status (civil registry) authority, usually part of the interior ministry. In Egypt this is the Civil Status Organization (مصلحة الأحوال المدنية, Maslahat al-Ahwal al-Madaniyya) of the Ministry of Interior, which issues the national ID card, birth, death, marriage and divorce records, and family and individual registry extracts (قيد عائلي, qaid a'ili, and قيد فردي, qaid fardi). Comparable bodies are Jordan's Civil Status and Passports Department (دائرة الأحوال المدنية والجوازات), the civil status and national card directorates of Iraq's Ministry of Interior, Lebanon's Directorate General of Personal Status (المديرية العامة للأحوال الشخصية), Saudi Arabia's Civil Affairs (الأحوال المدنية), and in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia the civil status office (الحالة المدنية, état civil) of the commune or town hall. Marriages and divorces are usually concluded before a religious official or court (a ma'zoun in Egypt, sharia or church courts in Jordan and the Levant, adouls in Morocco) and then registered with the civil authority.
Egypt issues birth certificates in two forms, a handwritten certificate from the Health Office (مكتب الصحة) of the district where the birth was registered, and a computerized certificate (شهادة ميلاد مميكنة, shahadat milad mumayakana) printed by the Civil Status Organization of the Ministry of Interior from the national civil registry database. Computerized birth, death, marriage and divorce certificates are printed at civil status offices and self service kiosks from the same database, and they show the 14 digit national number (الرقم القومي, al-raqam al-qawmi). An older handwritten certificate and a newer computerized printout of the same birth can differ in layout and spelling, so a translator translates the document actually supplied and does not merge the two.
How it works
From upload to certified delivery
Step 1
Upload and get an instant quote
Send us your document, choose your languages, and see your price right away.
Step 2
A professional translator translates it
A qualified professional translator translates your document.
Step 3
Reviewed for accuracy and certified
Your translation is reviewed for accuracy and certified with a signed certificate of accuracy.
Step 4
Receive your certified translation
You receive your certified translation, ready for official use.
Questions
Common questions
- Do I need my whole passport translated or just the photo page?
- Most receivers only need the biographic data page, which is one page (up to 250 source words) and costs 24.95 USD as a certified translation. If an officer or an RFE asks for visa and stamp pages, those are translated too and each adds to the page count.
- My passport already shows English next to my language. Do I still need a translation?
- If every field the receiver needs is printed in English, a translation may be unnecessary. But stamps, observations, amendments, and handwritten entries usually are not bilingual, and USCIS requires a certified English translation of any foreign-language content in a submitted document.
- Does a passport translation for USCIS need to be notarized?
- No. USCIS requires a signed translator certification of completeness, accuracy, and competence, not notarization. Some courts and state agencies do ask for notarization, so check the checklist of the office you are filing with.
- Will the name on the translation match my other documents?
- The qualified professional translator follows the Latin spelling already printed in your passport, including the coded lines at the bottom of the data page, which keeps the spelling consistent with the rest of your filing.
- My passport was issued in Egypt. What should I know before ordering?
- Egyptian passports do not separate given names from surnames, and the passport number is 8 digits preceded by a letter. Because USCIS and other US agencies match names to the passport, a translator uses the passport's Latin-letter spelling and name order when translating an Egyptian certificate for the same person, and translates Arabic-only endorsements and observations pages when they are supplied.
A translation error is ours to fix
If your certified 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 you paid for it. Our Refund Policy sets out the conditions and what it does not cover. Your documents are encrypted and kept confidential from start to finish.
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