EB-2 NIW entrepreneur documents translation for founders

An EB-2 national interest waiver petition from a founder usually rests on foreign-language business records, and USCIS requires each of them to come with a full English translation and a signed translator's certification. The records include the company registration, financial statements, customer contracts, press coverage, and letters from clients and experts abroad. The attorney or accredited representative decides which of these go into the Form I-140 filing, and the translation company then works from that final set. Certified document translation for USCIS treats each item as its own document.

Awards and press in an extraordinary ability case are covered in EB-1 evidence translation for foreign-language awards and press, and a treaty investor's ownership and funds in E-2 visa document translation. An NIW founder usually has a different mix: the venture's own records and the people who vouch for it.

Company registration extracts and articles of association

A founder's venture is usually shown by an extract from the commercial registry, the articles or bylaws, a shareholder register, and sometimes a tax registration certificate. Each is translated as a separate document with its own certification, which is the safer practice when an officer has to match every English page to a source page. Registry extracts carry small items that are easy to skip: the register number, the date of the extract, the registrar's name, the stamp, and the line stating the company's legal form.

A legal form such as "Ltda." or "GmbH" stays as printed on the original. The translation can add a bracketed note giving the usual English type of entity where that helps the reader. A business license translation follows the same rule for license numbers, activity codes, and the list of permitted business activities, which appears in full. For a Brazilian or Portuguese company, a Portuguese business license translation keeps the issuing body and the registration stamps in the position they hold on the page, and Portuguese translation services cover the rest of that company's papers.

Financial statements and revenue records

Audited statements, management accounts, bank-issued turnover letters, and tax filings are translated completely, including the auditor's opinion, the notes, and any page that looks like boilerplate. A revenue figure stays as printed. The translator does not convert currency, round a number, or restate a total. If a statement is in euros, reais, or yuan, the English text keeps that currency and the original figures, and a number such as 1.250,50 is written so the reader cannot mistake it for another amount.

Dates need the same care, because a fiscal year that ends in March is not a calendar year. Column headings, accounting abbreviations, and signed management statements are translated like any other text. When a table runs across several pages, the layout follows the source closely enough for an officer to check a total against the line items above it.

Contracts with customers, partners, and investors

A contract is translated in full, from the title and parties to the last signature block and annex. Extracting the "relevant" clauses does not meet the requirement, and neither does a summary of the commercial terms. A legal contract translation includes the schedules, price lists, and amendments attached to the agreement, because they are part of the document the founder submits.

Party names are carried over as written, with the same spelling in every contract in the packet. Signatures and company stamps are described in brackets, and handwritten initials in the margin are noted as such. A letter of intent or a purchase order from a foreign customer is short, but it gets the same treatment and its own certification.

Press coverage, grants, and awards

For a newspaper or magazine, only the relevant article is translated, together with the publication name, the date, and the page or web address shown on the source. A founder featured in a trade magazine sends the article about the venture and does not translate the whole issue. A press release is different: the release itself is the document, and it is translated from headline to contact block.

Grant letters, award certificates, and patent filings are standalone documents, so they are translated completely. Seals and any text printed along the edge of a certificate are part of the page.

Letters from clients, partners, and experts abroad

Support letters written in another language are translated in full. That covers the letterhead, the writer's title and credentials, the address, the date, and the signature. If the letter describes the writer's own qualifications in a paragraph, the paragraph is translated as written rather than shortened to a job title, since an officer reads the credentials to learn who is vouching for the founder.

The translation does not rewrite a letter for style or add statements the writer never made. If the writer wants to change the wording, the writer revises the original, and the revised letter is translated again.

One spelling for the founder and the company

A founder's name appears on the passport, the diploma, the registry extract, contracts, press articles, and every letter. If one document romanizes a name one way and another uses a different spelling, an officer may wonder whether the documents describe the same person. The translation company should fix one spelling for the founder, based on the passport, and apply it across the whole set. The same goes for the company name, its trade name, and the names of products and subsidiaries.

The founder's own degrees and transcripts belong in the packet too. Where a source shows a different spelling, the translation follows the source, and the attorney decides whether a short statement about the variance is needed.

• Use the passport spelling for the founder in every translation of the set.
• Give each company name one English form and keep it in all contracts and letters.
• Keep currency symbols and numeric formats as printed in financial documents.
• Describe stamps, seals, and signatures in brackets instead of leaving them out.

What the certification must carry

USCIS does not keep a list of approved translators or translation companies. It asks for a certification signed by the translator that states competence in both languages and that the translation is complete and accurate, with a name, date, and contact details. A founder who translates the company's own papers certifies evidence in his or her own case, which can lead an officer to give it less weight. A translation company provides a certification that stands apart from the petition. Machine output has no human certification and does not meet the requirement.

Before ordering, the founder should get the final document list from the attorney and make clear scans of every page, including the back of any stamped sheet. Texliff prepares each item with its own certification, and a financial statement translation is often the longest file in an NIW packet. We work from the full document as printed, so the English set matches the originals page by page.