Speaker 1: Is it necessary to have your immigration documents translated into English? I'm Eric Widman, I'm an immigration lawyer, and yes, USCIS and the State Department, National Visa Center, all require that the documents you submit to them with an immigration application, request for benefits, must be in English. So if you're from a country like Canada or the UK or Australia, you of course don't have to worry about translations because your original documents from your home country are already in English. But if you're like the majority of the rest of the folks out there applying for immigration benefits, you have to get your documents translated. But that doesn't mean you have to go to a specialist certified translation company. Of course that's fine, and that's often an easy solution, a quick solution too, and there are online portals where you can upload your documents to those companies. But if you have a helpful friend or a colleague who's fluent in both English and your native tongue, you can simply have that person fill out a certificate of translation along with completing the actual translation. So what does that certificate of translation need to say? It has to be completed under penalty of perjury and essentially say that the translator is proficient in both languages and that she has made an accurate copy and that everything looks good. So you'll have to get the exact verbiage elsewhere, but basically the certificate of translation is pretty short, pretty straightforward, and it needs to be signed, of course, by the translator that makes it certified. You cannot do the translation yourself. You are too interested in the outcome of it. You're not allowed by USCIS or NVC, the State Department, to do that. Also, a close family member might be not the best idea, but a friend or colleague is allowed by USCIS to do this. So you don't have to go to a completely unknown stranger to have this done, but you shouldn't have a close family member do it either.