Do I need to translate stamp on my old passport showing trip made in 2010?
Officially, you need to translate non-English visa stamps dated within the five year period of physical presence included in your Physical Presence Calculator.
The specific advice on what stamps really need translation vary widely as does how each interviewing officer decides which stamps they want to see translated.
When I went through my passport to decide which stamps needed to be translated, I selected for translation those that had any of the following information NOT in English or French:
Country name
entry/exit date
and whether it was an entry or an exit.
If all of this information in the stamp is also presented in English, I did not seek a translation.
For me, this resulted in the need to translate Farsi, Arabic, Chinese Simplified and Chinese Traditional characters.
Due to the number of languages needed for translation, I selected a professional translator.
I've heard of others who use friends who are native speakers of the foreign language can certify but I did not do this in order to complete the translations more quickly.
A few dozen stamps cost about $100 online and I received a completed pdf in 3 or 4 days.
In the end, my interviewer in Vancouver did not care about the translations. She said she didn't need them and didn't want to receive them. Since I went to the expense and trouble to complete the translations in accordance with their own instructions, I insisted that she put the translations in my file. Which she did so under protest.
