What did you have translated?

[itscoezy]

Just wondering what others did when it came to translations. I've seen a few different posts on the boards and am having a hard time deciding what to do.

Does secondary evidence need to be translated?

For example, we have a lot of stuff in English that we are submitting as proof of our relationship including photos. However we have bank statements/bank contracts etc in Spanish. I just wanted to include a couple statements to show we have a joint bank account, not necessarily to show the activitiy on it or to prove how much money we have. Do they need to be translated?

Also things like emails/text messages that are between us both but half are in Spanish?

Thanks so much for any insight!

 

[wilson]

The answer is simple. Any document in other languages, you send to CIC should be translated either to English or French. There is no need of specifying what are the types of docs to be translated. If you cannot translate or don't want to translate, then it is not necessary to be send such documents to CIC. CIC is not going the burden of translating such documents by themselves.

 

[Marty11]

You have to translate at least the required documents in the "Check List', like Marriage Certificate, etc.
Any additional proof that you have and you think it strengthen your case then it is worth translating. If you have many, then you have to prioritize them and translate the most important ones. A joint bank account statement I think it is worth translating.
Just my two cents.

 

[itscoezy]

Thanks

I was thinking since we are applying outland via mexico city that the secondary documents maybe didnt need to be translated as when we did our TRV we didn't need to translate and a Spanish speaking person reviewed our TRV for us. I know the TRV is different I just thought for purposes of text messages etc in spanish/english and a few other secondary things where there are a lot of pages it wouldn't make sense to have them all professionally translated.

Thanks for your help!

 

[mrandmrsromero]

Just wondering what others did when it came to translations. I've seen a few different posts on the boards and am having a hard time deciding what to do.

Does secondary evidence need to be translated?

For example, we have a lot of stuff in English that we are submitting as proof of our relationship including photos. However we have bank statements/bank contracts etc in Spanish. I just wanted to include a couple statements to show we have a joint bank account, not necessarily to show the activitiy on it or to prove how much money we have. Do they need to be translated?

Also things like emails/text messages that are between us both but half are in Spanish?

Thanks so much for any insight!

The only document we had translated (officially done in Mexico City) was our marriage certificate.

Our emails and texts were also a mix of spanish and english. We encountered no difficulty with this, and were not asked to translate any relationship proof that happened to be in spanish to english.

Your call.

 

[missmymexi]

Our lawyer sent documents out for translations, the items that were translated were the state police certificate, Identification such as his birth certificate, Divorce certificate, national registration cardand education certificates for my fiances daughters (they are not immigrating with him at this time).

I am not sure if this is all required but this is what was done for us, hope that helps Oh and the total fee for all these translations was $100 cnd.

 

[canadianwoman]

The only document we had translated (officially done in Mexico City) was our marriage certificate.

Our emails and texts were also a mix of spanish and english. We encountered no difficulty with this, and were not asked to translate any relationship proof that happened to be in spanish to english.

Your call.

Keep in mind that the visa officer does not have to consider any evidence that is not in English or French. Now if he/she knows the other language, and is willing, why not look at some emails or whatever. But they most definitely do not have to. And if it goes to appeal, the judge will not consider any evidence that was not translated.
Also, you are dealing with Canadian visa officers working in Mexico. The likelihood is that they can read Spanish, so there is less of a risk if you decide to not translate something. But anyone going through a visa office where the language is less easy to learn (such as Japan, China, etc.), definitely get everything translated.
The other consideration is that sometimes when people say "I submitted untranslated docs and it was OK and we got the visa," one reason might be that they had enough other evidence. So the visa officer may not have looked at the untranslated evidence, but it wasn't needed.
Sending in anything untranslated is risky. If you want to be sure it will be considered, get it translated.

 

[OhCanadiana]

For e-mails and txt messages consider just doing translating them yourself (even on the same document by hand) and adding a note offering to get them professionally certified. This has reportedly worked in the Mexico Visa Office before for docs submitted initially and anything they request afterwards.

For official docs, you do need to have a certified translation done by a sworn translator ("perito traductor")

 

[mrandmrsromero]

Keep in mind that the visa officer does not have to consider any evidence that is not in English or French. Now if he/she knows the other language, and is willing, why not look at some emails or whatever. But they most definitely do not have to. And if it goes to appeal, the judge will not consider any evidence that was not translated.
Also, you are dealing with Canadian visa officers working in Mexico. The likelihood is that they can read Spanish, so there is less of a risk if you decide to not translate something. But anyone going through a visa office where the language is less easy to learn (such as Japan, China, etc.), definitely get everything translated.
The other consideration is that sometimes when people say "I submitted untranslated docs and it was OK and we got the visa," one reason might be that they had enough other evidence. So the visa officer may not have looked at the untranslated evidence, but it wasn't needed.
Sending in anything untranslated is risky. If you want to be sure it will be considered, get it translated.

Very, very, very good points.

I should have clarifed that my comment was very specifically based on our personal experience with Mexico City, where we have had communication exchanges in both spanish and english.

Also, when we submitted the application, our not translating the emails/text wasn't really a conscious decision on our part. We basically didn't even think to do it -- probably because we were so caught up in getting the marriage certificate professionally done and everything else organized. So it could very well be that we had enough significant other proof that our emails were not even looked at; or that the IO read the spanish as is and decided that a translation wasn't required in our particular case. Hard to say.

Thank you very much for expanding on the topic - I definitely wouldn't want anyone applying from other countries to assume that this is a common practise in other VO's; or even other cases.

 

[mrandmrsromero]

For e-mails and txt messages consider just doing translating them yourself (even on the same document by hand) and adding a note offering to get them professionally certified. This has reportedly worked in the Mexico Visa Office before for docs submitted initially and anything they request afterwards.

For official docs, you do need to have a certified translation done by a sworn translator ("perito traductor")

This makes sense to me - I do remember reading somewhere about the official docs having to be certified for Mexico which is why I think we were so focused on the marriage certificate and didn't give the emails/texts a second thought.

 

[itscoezy]

Thanks everyone