Translation needed?

[Rachel n Tyler 43]

Hi my dear VJ members!

I should be receiving my packet 3 soon, so I'm preparing everything for my interview. I am Dutch, but the embassy in the Netherlands is no longer doing the interviews, so I have to go to Germany, Frankfurt to be exact.
Normally, you don't have to translate any documents that are either in English or the language that your embassy location speaks. However, I speak Dutch, they speak German.

I have my birth certificate, but it's in multiple languages. It'll  say
Staat (Dutch), État (French, Staat (German), Country (English) etc etc.
Everything is listed in multiple languages that way. Would I still need to translate it? A member from VJ told me I'd have to, but I'd like to make sure as it's gonna cost 25 bucks per page, and if I can save those costs, I'd rather save them haha.

[Vickys_Mom 229]

It's a dice roll.

 

You could write out the translation yourself and have either you and/or your spouse sign it and say "I/we are fluent in Dutch and English".

 

Or you could take the documents in just as they are and see what happens.

 

I still think a big part of what we do in the immigration process is compliance.  They could certainly read the English portion of the document, but they want to see if you will make the effort to translate it.

 

Weigh that $25/page translation fee against an RFE, having to go to the "back of the line" and start over again, etc.

 

Between my wife, my sister in law, and my mother in law, I probably paid $500 in translation fees.  No one at USCIS or the Embassy ever argued with us about it.  But I'm #######-retentive.  I wanted a piece of paper with a company's letterhead saying that we paid them to do the translations.

 

Regards,

Vicky's Mom

[OldUser 6,771]

I'd just pay to be safe.

How many pages are you translating? 2-3 pages of birth certificate would only cost you $50-75 to translate. That's a very small cost compared to delayes caused by translation not being accepted. Here's data point from somebody who thinks self-translation was a cause for RFE.

 

 

[Peot 161]

The VJ community, in general, leans towards playing it safe - and that will be the recommendation. For good reason - their ultimate goal is to help you, and playing it safe is generally the path to success. A lot of horror stories and tough cases have made people weary to suggest you go through the process with minimal preparation. 

 

I don't know if I completely agree with translating it if it already has multiple translations on each document as you suggest. What you would be paying for is essentially the same thing. Having the translation on a separate piece of paper would not be beneficial to you.

 

However, as you already implied, you should translate anything that is only in Dutch to either English or German. I would point to English because, as these documents follow you into the United States for future interviews, you can't expect them to read German - and may need to get them translated again. 

[Rachel n Tyler 43]

Thanks guys! You're all very right, it's worth the few hundred bucks to prevent any longer waiting times or headaches.

[Nous Eb 128]

On 7/19/2024 at 3:21 PM, Rachel n Tyler said:

Hi my dear VJ members!

I should be receiving my packet 3 soon, so I'm preparing everything for my interview. I am Dutch, but the embassy in the Netherlands is no longer doing the interviews, so I have to go to Germany, Frankfurt to be exact.
Normally, you don't have to translate any documents that are either in English or the language that your embassy location speaks. However, I speak Dutch, they speak German.

I have my birth certificate, but it's in multiple languages. It'll  say
Staat (Dutch), État (French, Staat (German), Country (English) etc etc.
Everything is listed in multiple languages that way. Would I still need to translate it? A member from VJ told me I'd have to, but I'd like to make sure as it's gonna cost 25 bucks per page, and if I can save those costs, I'd rather save them haha.

 

 

Hey fellow Dutchie here! No you do not have to have that translated. Your birth certificate, assuming you asked for the international version, is good enough. You are going to the US Consulate (weird they moved that to Frankfurt BTW! I was still able to go to Amsterdam last January), so they will speak English. At the Amsterdam Consulate only one girl spoke Dutch and she was the one checking our documents. The rest were all Americans. I didn't have anything translated since all our Dutch stuff already has translations. The process is not as scary as you think! PM me if you have questions. I was OVER prepared according to the lady at the consulate, haha.

[Yareth 60]

5 hours ago, Nous Eb said:

 

 

Hey fellow Dutchie here! No you do not have to have that translated. Your birth certificate, assuming you asked for the international version, is good enough. You are going to the US Consulate (weird they moved that to Frankfurt BTW! I was still able to go to Amsterdam last January), so they will speak English. At the Amsterdam Consulate only one girl spoke Dutch and she was the one checking our documents. The rest were all Americans. I didn't have anything translated since all our Dutch stuff already has translations. The process is not as scary as you think! PM me if you have questions. I was OVER prepared according to the lady at the consulate, haha.

 

Unfortunately this experience is outdated because of the move to Frankfurt. Translate your documents to English, even the ones with multiple languages. Frankfurt does not accept Dutch language documents. The multilingual version has been rejected a few times. 

[Nous Eb 128]

On 7/24/2024 at 12:20 AM, Yareth said:

 

Unfortunately this experience is outdated because of the move to Frankfurt. Translate your documents to English, even the ones with multiple languages. Frankfurt does not accept Dutch language documents. The multilingual version has been rejected a few times. 

 

But the international documents ARE already in English. Rejecting those would be ridiculous. The whole birth certificate is in multiple languages, what is there to translate?

[Yareth 60]

1 hour ago, Nous Eb said:

 

But the international documents ARE already in English. Rejecting those would be ridiculous. The whole birth certificate is in multiple languages, what is there to translate?

Some officiers have reasoned that not everything on the paper is legible (not English) and they can therefore not verify that all the information is valid. 
 

Also, compliance. Be safe, not sorry.