Certified Passport Translation: What It Must Include

You are filling out a form, the checklist says "copy of passport biographic page," and the page in your hand is in Arabic, Russian, Thai or Vietnamese. Plenty of readers arrive here after working out whether a passport needs translating at all. The next question is narrower: what exactly has to show up in the English version? A passport page is not a paragraph of text. It is a grid of printed fields, a photo, an embossed seal, a two-line block of machine code, and often stamps added years later by officials who wrote the dates by hand. Anything on that page a reviewer can see but cannot read is something your translation is responsible for.

What the rule demands, and what it leaves to judgment

The federal requirement is short. Under 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3), a foreign-language document filed with USCIS must come with a full English translation and the translator's signed statement that the translation is complete and accurate and that the translator is competent to translate from that language into English. That is the whole rule. It names no credential, requires no notary, and describes no format.

The judgment call sits inside the word "complete." A passport page carries content that is not prose — seals, stamps, a signature, codes. The rule does not list them, but a reviewer comparing your English page against the copy of the original will notice anything present in one and missing from the other.

A translation is complete when a reviewer can hold it next to the original and account for every mark on the page.

The biographic page: every printed field, including the labels

A correct translation reproduces both the label and the value for every field, in the order they appear:

• Type, issuing country code and document number
• Surname and given names, exactly as printed in the Latin-character line if one exists
• Nationality, date of birth, sex, place of birth
• Date of issue, date of expiry, issuing authority
• Personal or national identity number, where the country prints one
• Holder's signature line

Two of these cause most of the trouble. Place of birth is often abbreviated to a provincial code or an unfamiliar city name, and the translation should give the place as printed rather than guess at a modern equivalent. Dates are the other. Many passports print day-month-year; some print the month in the national language; a few carry a non-Gregorian date alongside the Gregorian one. The translation should make the date unambiguous in English without silently converting a calendar — a Persian or Hijri date is shown as it appears, with the Gregorian equivalent beside it where the passport itself provides one.

For passports in a non-Latin script, the name line is where errors compound. The passport already contains an official romanization of the holder's name, and the translation uses that spelling rather than inventing a new one. If the translator's romanization differs from the one on the passport, the two documents stop matching.

Seals, stamps and handwritten annotations

Nearly every data page carries a national emblem, an embossed or printed seal, and a line naming the issuing office. These are not decorative and they do not get dropped. The convention is a bracketed note placed where the element sits, followed by any legible text inside it: `[National emblem of the issuing state]`, or `[Round seal: Ministry of Interior, Passport Directorate, Office No. 4]`. If the seal text is partially illegible on your scan, the translator marks it illegible rather than inventing a reading — which is a reason to rescan before you submit anything. Translate the issuing authority line in full; it is what connects the document to a specific government office.

If you are submitting stamped interior pages, each carries its own content:

1. Entry and exit stamps. Each has a port name, a date and often an officer code. Overlapping stamps still count separately.
2. Visas issued by other countries. A visa sticker is a dense document of its own: category, number of entries, validity window, duration of stay, issuing post.
3. Extensions and endorsements. A validity extension, a change of name or a note about a replacement document changes the legal meaning of the passport. This is the single most important thing not to skip.
4. Handwritten additions. An officer's handwritten date or initials still has to be read and rendered, or marked as illegible where it cannot be.
5. Children endorsements. Older passports in some countries list accompanying children on an interior page.

You control how many pages you send, and page counts are based on 250 words each, so a sparse stamped page rarely costs what a dense data page does. Include a page because the filing asks for it, not to trim the translation.

Blank fields, the photo, the signature and the machine code

These four get dropped more often than anything else, and dropping them is what makes a translation look incomplete.

Blank fields. If the passport prints a field for "personal number" and the holder has none, the English version shows the label and marks it empty — `[blank]`. Deleting the row means your English page has fewer fields than the original, and the difference is visible at a glance.

The photograph. A translation is a text document and does not reproduce the image. It notes presence and position: `[Photograph of holder]`.

The holder's signature. If the holder signed in a non-Latin script, the note reads `[Signature of holder]` — not a transliteration attempt, and not a claim about what the signature says.

The machine-readable zone. Those two lines of chevrons and capitals at the bottom are already Latin characters encoding the data above. The standard treatment is to reproduce them as they appear with a short label. Transcribing them incorrectly is worse than labeling them, because the zone encodes a checksum and a reviewer who reads it will see the mismatch.

The certification page: what has to be on it

The translation is only half of what you file. The other half is the Certificate of Translation Accuracy, where the translator makes the statement the regulation asks for. At minimum it states that the translation is complete and accurate, states that the translator is competent to translate from the source language into English, identifies the document, and carries the translator's name, signature and date. A company name and contact information belong there too, so the recipient can follow up.

What is not required: a notary stamp, a state license, or an apostille. As certified versus notarized translation explains, a notary verifies who signed, not whether the translation is right — in most states a notary is barred from attesting to accuracy at all. An apostille authenticates an underlying public document for use abroad, and USCIS does not ask for one on a translation. Recipients outside USCIS sometimes add their own rules: a court may want the translator available, a university may want company letterhead. Check before you order.

With eVerbary, the certificate is part of a certified translation at $24.95 per page, where a page is up to 250 words including numbers — the same price as a standard translation, which is identical except that it comes without that certificate.

Preparing the copy you send

The quality of the translation is capped by the quality of the image. Passport pages are laminated, curved at the spine, and printed with security features that scatter light.

• Photograph or scan the full page, edge to edge, all four corners visible. A cropped seal is a seal the translator has to mark illegible.
• Shoot in even, indirect light. The laminate reflects a ceiling fixture straight into the name line.
• Flatten the booklet as much as you safely can, and take a second shot of any area the spine curves away from.
• Include every page you intend to file, and say which agency it is for.
• Keep the file in color. Ink color is sometimes the only way to separate overlapping stamps.

USCIS accepts a legible photocopy or photo of both the original document and the translation, so there is no need to mail your passport anywhere. Turnaround for a one- to three-page document is typically within 24 hours, with same-day available when a deadline is tomorrow. Formatting mirrors the original so fields line up where the reviewer expects them, and revisions are included. Start with a quote, or see the passport translation page for what we need from you.

Frequently asked questions