Our previous piece traced the tightening of US visa rules, and readers planning to study, work abroad or migrate have asked which documents need translation and what officers accept. This piece sets out the material in three groups.

One: academic documents

Degrees, diplomas, transcripts, enrolment letters and awards, with course titles, credits, length of study and award dates complete, and standard renderings of institutions and programmes. Transcripts keep course-by-course correspondence for credit assessment.

Two: identity and family documents

Birth certificates, marriage certificates, household registers, notarised kinship statements and police clearance. The critical point is consistent identity information: a person’s name must be rendered identically across documents and match the passport and forms such as the DS-160; dates follow one English convention.

Three: employment and financial documents

Employment and income letters, assignment letters, business licences, bank statements, tax records and property deeds. Amounts, dates and account references are checked individually; company names and titles are aligned with documents such as invitation letters and I-129 petitions.

Every page matches

All material follows the certified translation standard: page-by-page correspondence, a layout close to the original, a translator’s certificate and the translation stamp. An information sheet fixes names, birth dates, schools and companies before work begins, and each new document is checked against passport and forms. The fast track delivers standard certificates in a working day, with a full set scheduled from the interview date and a document comparison sheet for the final check.

Send the visa category, list and interview date through the contact page. For the background see “The Pause Button on Green Cards: Why Documents Cannot Be Improvised”, and “Certified Documents Allow Zero Error” takes the translator’s view.

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