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Why you should hire a certified translator for your immigration application

  • Gina Byun
  • Jan 7
  • 3 min read

Updated: Jan 8


When you’re gathering documents for your immigration application, you might want to save time and costs by hiring a person who is not a certified translator to translate your documents at a cheaper price. 


Although IRCC (Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada) and other government offices in Canada do accept translations done by non-certified translators as long as the translation is accompanied by an affidavit, this option should only be chosen when a certified translator is not available in your language. In this post, I will discuss why you should hire a certified translator for the accuracy and completeness of your application. 


What makes certified translators different from non-certified ones?


Certified translators are required by the professional translation association to adhere to a set of rules when translating documents for clients in order to ensure the accuracy and truthfulness of their translations. For example, the certified members of the ATIO (Association of Translators and Interpreters of Ontario) translate documents according to the four pillars of certified translation: no omission, no addition, no choice given and no embellishment. They strive to translate every word on the original document faithfully by adhering to those four rules. 


  • No omission, no addition


The “no omission, no addition” rule is particularly important when translating a sensitive document. Some clients may wish to omit certain phrases or words that are concerned with their past criminal activity or professional discipline clearly shown on the their court or employment records, because they want to hide such negative information about themselves in their immigration application. Other clients may ask the translator to add something that is not on the original document to misrepresent certain facts about themselves. For instance, a client may ask the translator to add their middle name on the translation of their birth certificate, even though the certificate does not show any middle name. Such client may have changed their legal name after birth for reasons such as bankruptcy, criminal history, etc.  A non-certified translator may accept such requests and produce an inaccurate translation, because they are not bound by the rules that certified translators are. If the applicant includes such untruthful translations in their application and submits them to IRCC, they are committing an act of misrepresentation that may significantly complicate their application at a later stage. 


  • No choice given


When translating a document, a translator may find more than one word in the target language to translate a certain word or phrase in the source language. Instead of choosing the best one, an inexperienced translator may include all the words they could think of in parentheses, so the reader can choose one when reading their translation. This makes the resulting translation vague and difficult to understand. This is why the ATIO asks candidates not to give any choice when writing their certification exam. Strong word choice is fundamental to the skills of a certified translator who is required to produce “idiomatic” expressions in the target language. 


  • No embellishment


I have been asked by several potential clients to make a “better” version of their original document. Some of these clients did not specify the type of their document, but I suspected that it contained some sensitive information they did not want to present to the decision-maker of their application. I cited the “no embellishment” rule to those clients, that I’m required by the translation association to produce accurate and faithful translations. 


This rule relates to the “no addition” rule discussed above, that certain clients want the translator to add details or modifications that are not on their source document to make their criminal offense or certain past action less serious on the translation. Even if clients do not make such a request, a non-certified translator may just want to boast their writing skills by using extra words and adjectives to make their translation more “interesting” to read. As a result, their translations can be unclear and imprecise. 



Conclusion:


Whether you’re filing an immigration application for yourself or your client, you should hire a certified translator to translate supporting documents that are not in English or French in order to ensure the highest accuracy and completeness of your application. If you hire a non-certified translator just to save money, you may get incomplete and unfaithful translations that do not properly reflect the important information contained on the original document, and may be found to have committed misrepresentation.  


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