USCIS birth certificate translation from Brazilian Portuguese to English

We match the names and dates to your application exactly, because a small mismatch is one of the most common reasons a file gets held up.

Who reads a Brazilian birth certificate

Family petitions at USCIS, immigrant visas at a consulate, a child's US passport or citizenship claim, school enrollment, Social Security, and anywhere parentage or date of birth has to be proven. The reader wants the same facts in English: who was born, to which parents, when and where, and the registry details that identify the cartório (registry office) and the entry, with our certification that the English is a complete and accurate rendering of the original.

What the translation preserves

The full name, the date and time of birth as recorded, the local de nascimento (place of birth) and the naturalidade (the officially recorded place of origin), which are separate fields and do not always match, the filiação (the parents the record names, whether one, two, or more), the grandparents when they are listed, and the registry block: the cartório, the livro (book), the folha (page), the termo (entry), and the matrícula. Names are copied exactly as written and never anglicized, so Guilherme stays Guilherme and a maiden name stays as the record has it. What we translate is everything around the names: the labels, the registry wording, and the text in the cartório's stamps and seals.

The 32-digit matrícula

The matrícula is the civil-registry number that identifies that exact record. It has 32 digits in the standard format required for certificates from January 2010, and its blocks point to the registry office and the entry: the book, the page, and the number. We copy it digit for digit, leading zeros included, and translate only the words around it. The number alone does not prove the document is genuine, but an office uses it to find the record, so a screenshot that crops off the end of it is a problem. Send the original PDF, not a photo of a screen.

Averbações and anotações: later changes

A birth record can pick up later events, written in as averbações (amendments to the record) and anotações (cross-references to other acts): a marriage, a divorce, a death, a legally recognized name change, a paternity recognition added afterward. They can sit in the margin or in a dedicated section, and they are part of the document, not decoration, so a translation that drops them is incomplete for the office reading it. We translate every one in full and keep it where it sits. If your certificate has writing in the margins or on the back, photograph it and send it with the front.

Inteiro teor and the standard certificate

Two versions of the same record turn up. The everyday certidão em breve relato (the resumida) states the facts of the birth, and it can still carry later annotations. The certidão de inteiro teor reproduces the whole entry, either as a full transcription or as an image copy (cópia reprográfica), every annotation included. We translate whichever one you were issued the same careful way. Which version a given office wants is a question for that office or your attorney, not something a translation decides.

Old handwritten books and new digital certificates

Older certificates were copied by hand from the cartório's registry books, and those are read line by line. We translate what is legible and mark what is not, rather than guess, so if a name or a date is unclear we will ask for a sharper image. Many certificates are now issued electronically, with a selo digital, a QR code, and the matrícula, often through the national CRC network, though the cartório is still the one that issues them. Either way, send the original file or a clear image of every page, because the stamp, the seal, or the verification line is the part a crop tends to cut off.

No agency queue and no machine draft: Ivy, a native Brazilian Portuguese speaker, translates your document and signs the Certificate of Accuracy USCIS requires on it herself.

Everything USCIS requires, included in every order