Certified English translations for USCIS filings, asylum cases, consular processing, and immigration court, in 326 languages.
Prism Linguistics translates immigration documents into English with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy, prepared to meet USCIS requirements. We cover 326 languages, most single certificates are ready in 24 to 48 hours from around $24.95 per page, and we support every stage from an I-130 petition to naturalization and immigration court.
Last reviewed August 24, 2026 by the Prism Linguistics editorial team
An immigration case is really a stack of paper from another country: certificates, records, letters, and statements that all have to arrive in English. This page covers translation for that whole journey. What certification itself means is explained on our certified translation page; here we deal with the immigration paperwork.
Send scans through the quote form or call +1 (833) 282 8883; you will have a fixed price for the whole bundle within 60 minutes during business hours.
Immigration paperwork does not arrive all at once. It shows up in waves — a petition here, a consular checklist there, sometimes a deadline letter you did not expect. We translate at every one of those points, and because the same team handles your file throughout, names, places, and dates stay spelled the same way from the first certificate to the last.
Birth and marriage certificates that prove the relationship, plus divorce decrees from prior marriages. These short civil documents are the most common starting point of the whole process.
The green card stage adds police clearance certificates, national IDs, and civil records from every country you have lived in, each needing its own certified English translation.
Citizenship applicants often need older records translated: name-change orders, foreign court dispositions, or a marriage certificate USCIS has not seen before.
Personal declarations, police reports, medical records, and country-condition evidence, handled with the confidentiality this material demands. More on asylum work below.
A Request for Evidence comes with a hard deadline. We prioritize RFE bundles, and same-day translation is sometimes possible for short documents, subject to capacity.
The National Visa Center's checklist calls for civil documents with English translations before an interview is scheduled. We prepare them in a format that uploads cleanly to CEAC.
Evidence filed in immigration court must carry a certificate of translation. We certify exhibit bundles for attorneys practicing before EOIR judges nationwide.
When the appointment itself needs a spoken-language professional, our private interpreting service provides interpreters for USCIS and asylum interviews.
The rule lives in 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3), and it is short: any document in a foreign language must be submitted with a full English translation, and the translator must certify in writing that the translation is complete and accurate and that they are competent to translate from that language into English.
Two words in that rule do most of the work:
Every document we return carries that certification on company letterhead, signed and dated, in the format USCIS officers see every day. The same certification serves the NVC, asylum offices, and immigration courts, so one translation usually covers each office your case passes through.
Most immigration bundles draw from the same pool of records. Here is how they group, with links to the document types we are asked about most.
| Category | Typical documents | Commonly filed with |
|---|---|---|
| Civil documents | Birth certificate translation, marriage certificate translation, divorce decrees, adoption papers, death certificates | I-130, I-485, N-400, NVC checklists |
| Identity documents | Passport translation, national ID cards, driver's licenses | I-485, DMV and SSA records, consular files |
| Education and work records | Diploma translation, transcripts, employment letters, pay records | Work visas, I-140 petitions, sponsor evidence |
| Evidence and declarations | Personal declarations, police reports, medical records, news articles, country-condition reports | I-589 asylum filings, RFE responses, EOIR exhibits |
If a document is not in the table, send it anyway. In 326 languages we have translated nikah namas, family books, village records, and letters from documents offices that no longer exist.
Asylum files are unlike other immigration work. The documents describe the worst events of a person's life, and the people named in them may still be at risk. We treat that material accordingly: your documents are seen only by the linguists assigned to the job, we sign non-disclosure agreements where an attorney requires one, and case material is never reused or shared.
The translation itself has to be faithful in a particular way. A declaration, a police report, or a threatening letter is evidence, so we translate what the document says, not a cleaned-up version of it. Tone, errors, and odd phrasing in the original are preserved, because an asylum officer or an EOIR judge is weighing exactly those details.
One honest note on cost: asylum declarations and country-condition evidence are often long, sometimes 20 pages or more, and per-page pricing adds up on documents like that. We quote the full bundle before starting so the total is known up front, and we will flag any pages, duplicate stamps or blank reverses for instance, that do not need translating at all.
Immigration law firms send us multi-document case files every week, and the workflow is built for them. Each document in a batch is translated and certified separately, file names stay matched to the firm's exhibit index, and the same translators stay on the case so a grandmother's name is not spelled three different ways across three certificates. That consistency matters; a caseworker who spots one discrepancy tends to start looking for more.
Delivery goes wherever the attorney wants it: straight to the paralegal handling the filing, to the client, or both. For court-bound matters our legal sector team also covers depositions and hearings, and provides interpreters for USCIS interviews through our private interpreting service. If your firm files RFE responses against short deadlines, tell us; we keep capacity for exactly that.
Four steps, and most of the work is ours. A typical order takes under five minutes of your time.
Upload clear scans or phone photos through our quote form, or email them to info@prismlinguistics.com. Tell us the language, your deadline, and where the translation is going: a USCIS filing, the NVC, an asylum office, or immigration court.
We reply within 60 minutes during business hours with a fixed price and turnaround for the whole bundle. Nothing starts until you approve it, so a long declaration never turns into a surprise invoice.
A professionally qualified native-speaker translator produces a complete, word-for-word English translation, a second linguist checks it, and we attach the signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy to each document.
You get signed PDFs by email, usually within 24 to 48 hours for short documents, ready to upload or file. We can mail wet-ink hard copies by USPS or FedEx, or deliver directly to your attorney.
As a guide, certified translation in the US market starts at around $24.95 per page for standard documents such as birth and marriage certificates, and most single certificates land close to that figure. Longer records, declarations, court files, and heavily stamped family books, are priced per page or per word, and rare languages can run a little higher. Treat those figures as market guidance; your quote confirms the exact price before anything begins, and full detail sits on our pricing page.
Turnaround for a short certificate is typically 24 to 48 hours from quote approval. Larger bundles take longer, and we confirm the date in the quote. When an RFE deadline is bearing down, same-day translation is sometimes possible for short standard documents, subject to capacity, so call rather than email and tell us the date printed on the notice.
A last note on notarization, because it costs people money for nothing: USCIS does not require notarized translations, and the certification statement is sufficient on its own. If a different body in your process asks for a notary, we prepare the certified translation in the form a notary public needs; see our notarized translation page for how that works.
The questions applicants and attorneys ask most often before sending a file.
Scans or phone photos are fine. You will have a fixed price and turnaround within 60 minutes during business hours, with every document certified for USCIS.
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