Top 5 Things You Need to Know about Translations

By: Rachel Horner

Last month, following the October Bulletin, Park Evaluations dealt with a crush of translations projects brought on by I-485 Adjustment of Status applications.

Luckily, Park’s Translations team offers a robust, diverse set of translation-related services in a wide variety of languages. In this post, we provide an overview of the process works from the perspective of clients hoping to supplement their H1B, L1, EB, and other visa petitions with certified translations.

From our desk to yours, here are the top 5 things you need to know about Park’s Translations services.

1. What does the Translations team do?

We provide translations for documents of any kind—birth certificates, academic degrees, corporate papers, you name it. We have a network of third-party translators we utilize; they’re certified and dispassionately work with these cases, so you never have to worry about illegitimate translations.

Each case can be different, but they all roughly follow the same process. First, you would send in what documents you need translated and all of the basic information regarding the case. We would then come up with a turn-around time depending on the urgency of the case.

Our translators are well-conditioned to work quickly and accurately on tight schedules. For cases needed ASAP, we can provide a turnaround time of as quick as 2 hours, if need be

2. How does Park get the translated documents?

Once our client opts to move forward with the request, we’ll reach out to our network of translators and find one who can provide their expertise. It’s similar to how we have a network of experts for our expert opinion letters: for most languages, we have a set of translators we’ve had experience working with in the past, and we’ve fostered great relationships with them, so no time is wasted trying to find someone of exceptional quality to translate the case. The best and brightest are already on hand.

The case is then sent to the client, and Park’s editors make any necessary revisions before the set deadline. Usually revisions are only minor—for example, formatting preferences, or a difference between two alphabets that could on occasion cause minor typos.

Of course, if there are still problems with the delivered product, Park’s Quality team is available to help. But our clients have never had any major revision requests, which I believe is a testament to the overall quality of our network of translators.

3. Why are translations important to immigration?

If you’ve ever received an RFE from USCIS, you’ll notice that USCIS specifically asks for a certified translation of all foreign-language documents—typically on the very first page of the RFE, in fact. This is because if USCIS was to receive a translation from an illegitimate or non-third-party translator, there is a much greater chance of fraud that could corrupt the candidate’s application. It’s similar to our expert opinion letters in that we use an outside expert to verify the legitimacy of the candidate’s credentials. The more evidence that suggests a candidate’s application is 100% accurate and free of fraud, which USCIS is constantly monitoring as it can be a problem, the less of a chance there is of the candidate’s application being denied.

Many times, we’ll see expert opinion or academic evaluation requests for which the candidate has translated the documents themselves, and each time we advise against this and offer one of our translator’s services. It’s not that we don’t believe that the candidate knows the language or are concerned that they’re misrepresenting information. It’s that USCIS is very clear that they require translations performed by a party who is not only qualified but disinterested—they can’t have anything riding on the outcome of the petition, or else USCIS will treat the information as possibly biased, or incorrect.

4. What advantages do you get by going with Park’s Translations team?

The themes I would highlight are reliability, versatility, and care. The past few months have left a lot of us with uncertainty and more stress than normal. The COVID-19 pandemic and the presidential race have had huge impacts on immigration, and during this difficult time, our translations department can be counted on as secure and legitimate.

We prioritize maintaining clear and constant communication with our clients and making the translations process as easy as possible for them. Besides our great customer service, clients should never have to worry about whether we can provide a translation for a certain type of document, as we have had experience in translating almost anything, from immigration-related documents such as academic degrees and transcripts, to divorce papers for a lawsuit (yes, we translate documents outside of immigration as well!), to highly complex corporate letters. We’ve built a strong collective of reputable translators so that we can accommodate the client in whatever ways they need.

5. What big projects has Park’s Translations team tackled recently?

One trend we saw over the month of October was a surge in requests for translations regarding green card applications. We believe this is because of the substantial increase of available adjustment of statuses for those on EB-3 visas—the cutoff date for those in India on an EB-3 Visa jumped from 2009 to 2015. As a result, a lot of people were eager to start sending in their applications and needed to have their birth certificates, academic degrees, and related documentation translated. At the time, it was unclear whether these dates would extend to the November bulletin, so that’s another reason why people rushed to get their translations in. We know now that the November bulletin is continuing this cutoff date, but we definitely had a huge surge in cases. Fortunately, since we have a very solid process in place and are used to working under tight deadlines, we had no difficulty accommodating these many urgent requests, and we look forward to handling many, many more in the coming months.

To request a translation with Park Evaluations, email Mike Skok at [email protected].