Psychological evaluation translation for USCIS filings

A psychological evaluation, therapy record, or psychiatric report written outside the United States has to be translated into English in full, and the translation has to carry a signed certification, before USCIS or an immigration court will read it. The rule is the same whether the report supports an asylum claim, a VAWA self-petition on Form I-360, or a hardship waiver on Form I-601 or I-601A.

Mental-health records raise problems that a birth certificate does not. They contain diagnostic terms, classification codes, test scores, quotations from the patient, and the clinician's credentials, and each has a correct way to be carried into English.

Psychological evaluation translation for USCIS: what the filing requires

USCIS requires every foreign-language document in a filing to come with a full English translation and a certification that the translation is complete and accurate and that the translator is competent in both languages. In practice the certification gives the translator's typed name, signature, date, and contact information, and it names the document that was translated. A separate certification for each record is the safer practice. USCIS keeps no approved list of translators or companies, so "USCIS-certified translation" only describes a translation that carries the certification USCIS asks for. The agency does not endorse anyone. A certified document translation for USCIS follows the same rules for a clinical report as for any other record.

"Complete" covers everything printed or written on the page: letterhead, headings, form-field labels, stamps, seals, signatures, handwritten margin notes, footers, and page numbers. Parts that cannot be read are marked "[illegible]" instead of guessed, and empty fields are marked as blank. A summary or an extract of a long evaluation does not meet the requirement, and neither does machine translation, which has no human certification and mishandles names, dates, and clinical terms. When a translation is missing or uncertified, USCIS may issue a Request for Evidence or a Notice of Intent to Deny, and it can also deny a filing without first asking for more. Which records belong in the filing is a decision for the attorney or accredited representative. The translation company works from whatever pages it is given.

Diagnostic terms and classification codes stay as the clinician wrote them

A translator does not diagnose. If a Russian psychiatrist wrote a diagnosis in the terminology of the national classification, the English text gives the closest accurate English term for what the source says, and the code printed in the report is copied exactly as it appears. The translator does not convert the code to another system, does not replace the clinician's term with a different one, and does not add a diagnosis that the source leaves out.

Some terms in older or regional practice have no exact English counterpart. In that case the translation gives the nearest English equivalent and keeps the original term in square brackets, so the officer, the evaluator, and the attorney can all see what the source document said. Abbreviations are handled the same way: the abbreviation stays, and the expanded form goes in brackets only when the source spells it out elsewhere.

Clinician credentials and license numbers are copied, not reformatted

An evaluation carries weight partly because of who signed it, so the signature block gets the same care as the findings. The clinician's title, the clinic or hospital, the department, and any registration or professional license translation details on the page are translated in full. Four rules apply to every record of this kind.

• License, registration, and file numbers are copied digit by digit and never reformatted.
• The clinician's name keeps one spelling throughout, matched to any other document in the filing that carries the same name.
• Stamps and seals are described by their text, and signatures appear as "[signature]".
• Letterhead addresses and phone numbers are translated or transliterated as printed, even when they look like decoration.

Degrees and specialties are rendered with the term the issuing country uses for them, with a short bracketed note when the English title would otherwise mislead.

Patient statements, test names, and scores keep their original form

Evaluators often quote the person they examined. Quotations stay in the first person, in the tense and order the clinician recorded them, so that "I could not sleep after he left" does not become a report of what the patient said. The translator does not smooth grammar, tone down strong wording, or add clarifying words the speaker never used. Where the clinician wrote a paraphrase instead of a quotation, the translation stays a paraphrase.

Psychological tests and rating scales are listed by the name printed in the report, with the original abbreviation kept, and every score, subscale value, and cut-off number is carried over unchanged. Scoring tables are rebuilt in the same row and column order as the original so an officer can match each figure to the source. A statement signed by a relative or a former colleague and attached to the record, such as an affidavit translation, is translated and certified separately from the clinical pages.

The foreign record and the US evaluator's own report are different documents

Many asylum, VAWA, and waiver files contain two layers of mental-health evidence. The first is the record created abroad, such as hospital discharge notes, therapy session summaries, or an earlier evaluation. The second is a report written in English by a clinician in the United States who examined the applicant. Only the first layer needs a translation. The American evaluator's report is the evaluator's own work, and a translation company does not write, edit, or summarize it.

When the US evaluator relies on foreign records, those records are attached and translated like any other exhibit, which is why asylum document translation usually includes medical and psychological pages next to the declaration. An interview carried out through an interpreter is a separate matter, because interpretation of speech and translation of paper are different services. In immigration court, exhibits are also paginated and indexed, and the certificate of translation has to be typed, signed, and contain the translator's contact information and statements of competence and accuracy.

The source language changes the physical record. A clinic file in Spanish may arrive as scanned notes with handwritten additions, while a Russian discharge summary is often a stamped form with a typed narrative, and both need the layout kept intact. Language-specific handling is described on the pages for Spanish medical records translation, Russian medical records translation, and Russian translation services.

What to gather before ordering a translation of therapy records

Therapy records describe violence, abuse, and fear, and many of the people who file them have good reason to ask a translation company how their files are received, stored, and deleted. That question is reasonable to put in writing before any pages are sent. The certificate itself contains only what it needs: the translator's statement, the identification of the document, and the contact details.

The law office should collect the full records first, including the reverse sides of pages and any attachments, and decide which of them go into the filing. For the clinical pages we prepare certified medical records translation with a separate certification for each record, and the translations come back in the same page order as the originals.