Farsi to English Certified Translation for USCIS

If you are filing with USCIS and your documents are in Farsi, you have probably already noticed the problem: your records do not look like the American ones the forms seem to assume. Your birth record is not a single sheet but a booklet with your photograph in it, and your marriage, your divorce and your children are written inside that same booklet, often by hand, in different inks, by different clerks, years apart. Your Afghan documents may be stamped in two languages. The question of what exactly has to be translated, and how, is a fair one — and the answer is both simpler and stricter than most people expect.

What the regulation actually requires

The rule is short. Under 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3), any document in a foreign language filed with USCIS must come with a full English translation, and the translator must certify that the translation is complete and accurate and that they are competent to translate from that language into English.

That is the whole requirement. There is no clause about licensed translators, no registry of approved providers, no notary seal, no stamp from an Iranian or Afghan authority. People coming from systems where an official translation bureau is the only legal path often assume the US works the same way. It does not.

The certification is a signed statement of competence and completeness — not a government license.

What trips up Farsi filings is almost never the certification. It is the word complete. A booklet page with handwriting in the margin, a registrar's oval stamp and a strike-through line is not fully translated until all three appear in English.

The identity booklet (شناسنامه) and what has to be on the page

Iran's core civil document is an identity and birth booklet (شناسنامه), issued by the National Organization for Civil Registration. It is not a one-page certificate. Depending on the edition, it contains:

• The identity page — given name, surname, father's name, mother's name, place and date of birth, national identification number (کد ملی), serial number and registration number
• A photograph page, added at adulthood on most booklets
• A marriage page (ازدواج), filled in by hand when a marriage is registered, with the spouse's details and the registry office number
• A divorce or annulment page (طلاق), completed the same way
• A children page (فرزندان), one line per child
• A death notation, usually a perforation or an overprinted notice

Every page you submit must be translated, including pages that are empty. An empty marriage page is evidence; omitting it leaves the officer unable to tell whether the page was blank or missing. The clean treatment is a labeled section stating that the page bears no entries. If your filing rests on a marriage recorded inside the booklet rather than on a separate certificate, say so when you order, because the exhibit list for a marriage certificate translation looks different in that case.

Solar Hijri dates (تاریخ شمسی) and how to present them

Iranian civil documents run on the Solar Hijri (Jalali) calendar, as do many Afghan records. A date written as 1370/04/15 is a Solar Hijri date whose Gregorian equivalent falls in 1991. The year begins at the spring equinox, around March 20 or 21, so the Gregorian year straddles two Solar Hijri years and a careless conversion lands you twelve months off.

1. Keep the original date in the translation, exactly as written, including the order of its components.
2. Give the Gregorian equivalent immediately after, in brackets, so the officer never has to convert anything.
3. Convert consistently across every document in the filing — one translator, one convention.

Month names matter as much as numbers. A date written out in words uses Persian month names such as Farvardin, Khordad or Esfand (فروردین، خرداد، اسفند), each with a fixed Gregorian span. A translator unfamiliar with the calendar may simply transliterate the month name and leave the reader no better off.

Afghan documents add a wrinkle: some ministry records issued for international use carry a Gregorian date alongside the Solar Hijri one, and occasionally the two disagree. The translation reproduces both and does not pick a winner. A discrepancy on the original is a fact about the original.

Names across the Latin alphabet: pick one spelling and hold it

Persian is written in the Arabic script, which does not record short vowels, so the same written name reaches English through several plausible routes. A given name rendered Mohammad, Mohammed, Muhammad or Mohamad (محمد) is one written form. Saeed, Said, Sa'id and Saied (سعید) are the same name, as are Mehdi and Mahdi (مهدی). Surnames ending in the Persian suffix -i (ی) come out as Ahmadi or Ahmady; the patronymic suffix (زاده) is Zadeh, Zade or Zada.

None of those is wrong. The problem is using two of them in one application package.

• Your Iranian passport already carries a Latin-alphabet spelling chosen by the passport office. That spelling is your anchor.
• Your identity booklet has no Latin spelling at all, so the translator must choose one — and should choose the passport's.
• Afghan identity records (تذکره), especially older handwritten ones, may show no Latin spelling or one invented for an earlier visa file.

Tell your translator which spelling your US-facing documents use before the work starts. Where an original itself shows a conflicting Latin spelling, the translation reproduces what is there and the difference is explained in your filing rather than quietly smoothed over; our guide on name spelling differences across your documents covers that case. One more Persian-specific trap: the father's name is a required field on Iranian civil records and sits beside the holder's name. It is not a middle name.

Handwriting, stamps and the things people leave out

Farsi civil records are heavily annotated. The printed form is the skeleton; the meaningful content is often written in by a registrar, then stamped and signed. A complete translation accounts for all of it:

• Handwritten registry entries — marriage date, spouse's name, registry office number and city
• Round and oval office stamps, rendered in English inside a bracketed note such as [Round stamp: Civil Registration Office No. 4, Shiraz]
• Signatures — described, not invented. [Signed] is the correct treatment
• Strike-throughs and corrections — a crossed-out entry must appear as crossed out, because that is what the record says
• Marginal notes referencing a later court judgment, name change or correction
• Serial and registration numbers, including those printed vertically in the gutter

An officer comparing your booklet against your petition is checking whether the registry office that recorded your marriage matches the one on your marriage document, and that information lives only in the stamp. Our post on whether seals, stamps and handwriting need to be translated walks through the standard treatment. Where handwriting is genuinely unreadable, a bracketed [illegible] marker is the honest answer and preserves the accuracy the certification attests to.

Court judgments, divorce records and police certificates

Divorce in Iran is decided by a court, then entered in the identity booklet and in a separate divorce document (سند طلاق). A court judgment (رأی دادگاه) runs several pages and includes the case number, branch and reasoning; the registration document issued by the notary office (دفترخانه) is shorter and often proves the end of a prior marriage more cleanly, though some filings call for both. A full divorce decree translation covers the judgment itself.

Two Farsi-specific items to watch:

• Dowry amounts (مهریه) are frequently stated in gold coins (سکه بهار آزادی) or rial sums. The translation reproduces the figure and unit as written. It does not convert currency or estimate a dollar value.
• Legal terms with no English equivalent, such as the revocable and irrevocable divorce categories (طلاق رجعی، طلاق بائن), get a literal English rendering with the original in parentheses. Substituting a US legal concept misdescribes the document.

Iranian criminal record certificates (گواهی عدم سوء پیشینه) are short but carry a validity period and a fingerprint reference that both belong in the police record translation. Afghan applicants often submit ministry records with bilingual headers; the Farsi or Dari body text still needs translating even when the header is already in English.

What the finished translation looks like, and what it costs

A certified Farsi to English translation should be a document the officer can set beside the original and read line for line: the layout mirrors the original, every stamp and handwritten note appears bracketed and described, dates carry both the Solar Hijri original and the Gregorian equivalent, names use one consistent Latin spelling, and a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy states that the translation is complete and accurate and that the translator is competent in Farsi to English.

Pricing is $24.95 per page, where a page means up to 250 words including numbers — not a physical sheet. Identity booklet pages are short, so several often fall inside a single billed page, while a multi-page court judgment runs higher. Standard translation costs the same $24.95 per page; the only difference is the signed certificate, so if a US agency, court or university will see the document, you want the certified version.

You do not need to mail anything. USCIS accepts a legible photocopy or photo of both the original document and the translation, so a clear scan of each booklet page — all four corners, no glare on the lamination, the stamp readable — is enough to work from. The requirements for a filing are collected on our USCIS certified translation page, and you can upload pages for a quote before committing to anything.

Frequently asked questions