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Translating the Documents in a Salvadoran Asylum File

Salvadoran asylum files are built from municipal civil records, police and prosecutor documents, and the denuncia an applicant filed before leaving. This page is about translating them.

Civil records from the municipal registries

Salvadoran births are registered by the municipal civil registry, and a certification is a transcription of that book entry. Older ones are narrative — a continuous paragraph reciting who appeared, before whom, and what was declared — rather than a form with labelled fields, and they are translated as the narrative they are. See our Salvadoran birth certificate page.

Certificates name the book, folio and entry that locate the registration, and those references are reproduced exactly. Both surnames are carried across in the order the document gives them — see our Spanish page for why dropping the second one causes problems.

The denuncia, and why it is usually the hardest document

The document that recurs most in these files is the denuncia — the report the applicant filed with police or prosecutors before leaving. It is also the hardest to translate well. Denuncias are frequently handwritten by an officer taking dictation, in a hurry, with abbreviations, a case number that may or may not have been assigned, and a stamp that may be partly illegible.

We translate what is there, including the officer's phrasing and the parts that trail off. We do not tidy the account into better Spanish and then into fluent English, because the applicant's own words as recorded that day are the evidence. Where the copy is a photograph of a carbon copy — which it often is — we say what can and cannot be read.

What else these files contain

Alongside civil records and denuncias:

• Criminal record certificates, and documents about proceedings
• Court documents, protection orders and summonses
• Medical and forensic reports documenting injuries
• School records, and letters from schools about a child's withdrawal
• Employment records, and evidence of extortion demands
• Declarations from relatives and neighbours who remained

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 El Salvador commonly contain evidence recording gang extortion and forced recruitment; violence against women; displacement within the country; and the denuncias and protection measures filed before leaving.

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 one sheet of your document is one page, with no word cap.

A standard translation is the same professional human translation without the certificate, for when you only need to understand the content or for internal or informal use. It is billed at the same $24.95 per page with no word cap.

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