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Translating the Documents in a Brazilian Asylum File

Brazilian asylum files are built from cartório civil records and from the police report a person filed before leaving. This page is about translating them, not about assessing a claim.

Cartórios, and the identifiers

Brazilian civil records come from a cartório de registro civil — a notarial office, privately operated under state delegation — rather than a government department. That surprises people and is entirely ordinary; the translation names the cartório as printed.

Documents carry the CPF and frequently the RG, and those identifiers run through the whole file. See our Brazilian birth certificate page.

The boletim de ocorrência

The document that recurs most is the boletim de ocorrência, the police report filed before leaving. It is frequently taken down by an officer from dictation, in a hurry, with abbreviations and a case number, and increasingly filed online with its own layout.

We translate what is there, including the officer's phrasing and the parts that trail off. We do not tidy the account into better Portuguese and then into fluent English, because the applicant's own words as recorded that day are the evidence.

What else these files contain

Alongside civil records and police reports:

• Protective measures (medidas protetivas) and court documents
• Public prosecutor documents
• Medical and forensic reports (IML)
• Employment records, and evidence of extortion demands
• Community association, church or union documents
• Declarations from relatives and neighbours

Portuguese is not Spanish

A translator who works in Spanish does not automatically work in Portuguese, and a Brazilian file handled by a Spanish translator produces exactly the kind of small inaccuracies that accumulate.

See our Portuguese page.

What the documents in these files record

We do not assess claims and this page does not describe conditions in any country. What we can say is documentary, because it is a fact about paper: files from Brazil commonly contain evidence recording criminal group and militia threats and extortion; violence against women; sexual orientation and gender identity; indigenous and quilombola land disputes; and the boletins de ocorrencia, protective measures and IML reports that document them.

Naming that is useful for one practical reason — the vocabulary of a file decides how it should be translated. A document about a threat is translated at the register the threat was written in; a forensic report is translated without its findings being tidied; a community attestation is named as an attestation and not upgraded into a police record. What any of it means for a case is for an attorney, and asylum is not a filing to make alone.

Translated as written, because credibility is the issue

An asylum file is judged largely on whether the account holds together. That makes a translation unusually consequential, and it makes the temptation to improve things actively dangerous. A vague sentence rendered precisely, a torn line reconstructed from context, a threat translated more fluently than it was written — each of those creates a discrepancy between the document and the testimony that was never in the record.

So: everything legible is translated, at the register it was written in. Anything genuinely illegible is marked illegible rather than guessed at. Nothing is softened and nothing is heightened. Where a document is damaged, partial or a photograph of a photocopy, the translation says so plainly — which is worth far more to the person reading the file than a clean-looking rendering of something nobody can actually read.

One packet, both forums

An affirmative application goes to USCIS under 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3). A defensive one is filed with the immigration court, where 8 CFR 1003.33 and the EOIR practice manual also want the translator's name, address and telephone number attached. Our certification carries both, on letterhead and page-numbered, so the same translation serves either — see what it states. Where one certification needs to cover a bundle of exhibits, it will list them.

Files here name people who may still be at risk. Everything is translated by professional human translators and handled confidentially — never pasted into a public machine-translation tool. What we do not do is advise on the claim, tell you what evidence to gather or assess whether a document helps you. That is your attorney's work, and this is the point in a case to have one.

How it works

Upload a photo or a scan of your document, pick the language pair and check out online. You never have to mail originals: a legible copy is all we need.

A professional human translator, never machine translation, translates the document word for word and mirrors the layout of the original. Every certified translation ships with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy that meets the requirements of USCIS, courts and universities.

Your translation is delivered digitally, usually within 24 hours for documents of one to three pages, and same-day delivery is available. If anything needs adjusting, we revise it.

Certified vs. standard translation

A certified translation is a word-for-word translation accompanied by a signed statement attesting to its accuracy and completeness. It is what official bodies require: USCIS, courts, universities and government agencies. Certified translations are $24.95 per page, where a page is up to 250 words.

A standard translation is for business or personal use where certification is not needed, such as CVs, client intake forms or marketing material, and is billed at the same $24.95 per page of up to 250 words.

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