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What USCIS actually requires of a translation

Updated 2026-09-09

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.

The wording has not changed since the 1994 rulemaking that put it there. Anything you read that describes a "new USCIS translation rule" is describing a change in someone's marketing, not in the regulation.

What the Policy Manual adds

USCIS's own officer guidance — Policy Manual Volume 1, Part E, Chapter 6, section E — restates the regulation and adds two sentences that matter in practice.

"A summary of a document prepared by a translator is unacceptable." This is the Manual's own gloss on full. A one-page English précis of a twelve-page notarial booklet, however faithful, is not a translation of it. The same applies to a translation that renders the certificate and skips the attached copies, or one that covers the table and omits the notes under it.

The translator may have to appear. Where an officer takes a written statement in a foreign language and a translator renders it into English, the Manual says "it may be necessary to produce the translator at a subsequent interview or hearing" if the translation's accuracy comes into question — to testify to their knowledge of both languages and to the translation. Two practical consequences follow. The certification should name a real, reachable person: put an address and, sensibly, a phone number or email on it. And a translation certified by a name nobody can produce is worth less than one certified by a person who can be asked about it.

What happens when the certification is missing

The regulation does not say what an officer does with a foreign-language document that arrives without a compliant translation, so the useful evidence is what adjudicators actually do. The Administrative Appeals Office publishes its decisions, and the pattern is consistent: the document is not rejected with a request to fix it — it is simply given no weight, and the claim it was meant to support fails.

A representative example, decided 23 April 2025 on an EB-1A petition: the petitioner submitted foreign-language videos with English text but no original-language transcript and no translator's certification. The AAO wrote that "it is not possible to meaningfully determine whether a translation is accurate when we lack original transcripts", quoted 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3), and held that the petitioner "has not presented sufficient evidence to establish the criterion". Note the sequence: no certification, no original beside the English, so the English counted for nothing.

Two lessons. First, file the source document with the translation, always — the officer needs something to lay the English next to, and the appeals office says so in as many words. Second, do not rely on a Request for Evidence to catch a missing certification. It may arrive as a denial instead.

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
• USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 1, Part E, Chapter 6 — Evidence (section E, Translations)
• AAO non-precedent decision of 23 April 2025 (I-140, extraordinary ability) — foreign-language evidence without a certified translation given no weight

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• 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.