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What USCIS actually requires of a translation

Updated 2026-08-08

There is exactly one federal regulation governing translations submitted to USCIS. It is a single sentence. Most of what circulates online as a "USCIS requirement" is not in it.

The rule, in full

8 CFR 103.2(b)(3):

Any document containing foreign language submitted to USCIS shall be accompanied by a full English language translation which the translator has certified as complete and accurate, and by the translator's certification that he or she is competent to translate from the foreign language into English.

That is the whole thing. Read it as a checklist and it has exactly three requirements:

1. A full English translation — the entire document, not the parts you think are relevant.
2. The translator certifies it is complete and accurate.
3. The translator certifies they are competent to translate that language pair.

What the rule does not say

This list is longer than the rule, and it is where the money goes.

It does not require a certified, licensed or accredited translator. There is no US federal certification for translators. ATA membership is a professional credential, not a legal requirement, and USCIS does not ask for it.

It does not require notarisation. A notary attests to a signature, not to a translation. Some other bodies — courts, some foreign consulates, some universities — want notarised translations. USCIS's rule does not.

It does not require a translation agency. The regulation says "the translator", singular, a person.

It does not require the translation to resemble the original. No font, no layout, no page-for-page correspondence, no reproduced letterhead. A clean typed English document with the content organised so a reader can follow which value belongs to which field satisfies the rule completely.

It does not require the seal to be reproduced. It requires the seal's content to be translated, because the seal is part of the document. Copying the red seal image into the English page is not required and is, in several jurisdictions, actively unhelpful.

If a service is selling you visual fidelity to a Chinese original as a USCIS requirement, they are selling you something the regulation does not ask for. It may still be worth buying for other reasons — a reviewer can check it faster — but it is not compliance.

What the certification has to contain

USCIS does not publish a mandatory form. In practice a certification that has never caused a problem contains:

• a statement that the translator is competent to translate from the source language into English;
• a statement that the translation is a complete and accurate rendering of the attached document;
• the translator's printed name;
• the translator's signature;
• the translator's address;
• the date.

A usable template:

I, [full name], certify that I am competent to translate from Chinese into English, and that the above/attached translation is a complete and accurate translation of the document titled "[document name]".

Signature: ____________ Printed name: ____________ Address: ____________ Date: ____________

Attach it to the translation, and file the translation together with a copy of the foreign-language original. USCIS wants to be able to lay them side by side.

Where "complete" actually bites

The rejections and Requests for Evidence in this area are almost never about translation quality. They are about completeness. On Chinese documents, the recurring omissions are:

For the English each Chinese field should carry, the Chinese–English glossary for official documents covers the terms that appear across all of these.

The principle behind all of them: a reader of the English version should be able to account for every mark on the original. If something appears on the page and not in the translation, the translation is not complete, whatever its quality.

Numbers, names and dates

The rule does not mention these, but they are where real harm happens, because an error here is not a translation error — it is a factual discrepancy across your file.

• Names. Use the spelling on the passport, everywhere, in every document in the package. A father who appears as ZHANG Wei in one document, Wei Zhang in another and Chang Wei in a third has created a question that somebody now has to answer.
• Dates. Chinese documents write 2019年3月5日. Write it unambiguously — 5 March 2019 — rather than 03/05/2019, which means two different days on two sides of the Atlantic.
• Numbers and identifiers. ID numbers, certificate numbers, account numbers and amounts should be transcribed character for character. Nothing is gained by "cleaning up" a number's formatting and a transposed digit is a discrepancy.
• Addresses. Pick one convention for the whole package and hold to it.

FAQ

Does USCIS require a certified translation?

It requires a translation accompanied by the translator's certification described in 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3). That is what "certified translation" means in the US context — a certification statement signed by the translator. It does not mean a translator holding a government certificate, because no such thing exists federally.

Does the translation need to be notarised?

Not for USCIS. A notary verifies the identity of the person signing; USCIS's rule does not ask for it. Other receiving bodies may.

Does the English version have to look like the original?

No. Nothing in the regulation addresses appearance. Completeness and accuracy are the requirements; a clear structure that preserves which value belongs to which field is what makes those checkable.

Do I need to submit the original document too?

Submit a copy of the foreign-language document with the translation, following the form instructions for the benefit you are applying for. Do not send irreplaceable originals unless the form specifically asks for them.

What if a document is partly in English already?

Translate the foreign-language portions and keep the English portions as they are, clearly marked. The requirement is that the whole document is readable in English, not that it is retyped.

Does a seal need to be translated?

Yes — the text inside it does. Describe it rather than reproducing it, for example: [Round red seal: Public Security Bureau of XX District, XX City]. That satisfies completeness without pasting an image of an official seal into a document you produced.

Sources

• 8 CFR 103.2 — Submission and adjudication of benefit requests

Related guides

• Can you translate your own documents? A straight answer per countryFor USCIS the regulation does not forbid it but the conflict of interest is real. For Canada it is explicitly not allowed. Here is the rule for each destination, and what to do instead.
• The household register in US immigration filings — what it proves and what it does notWhich pages to submit for I-130, I-485 and I-751, why the hukou alone rarely establishes a relationship, and the change-record page that resolves most name discrepancies.
• Certified, notarised, sworn, apostilled — which one do you actually needFour words that get used interchangeably and mean four unrelated things. What each one certifies, who can produce it, roughly what it costs, and how to tell which your case requires.