How to Translate a Birth Certificate for USCIS: Spanish to English
Channel: Texan Translation
Date: 2022-04-16

This is a recorded webinar given on April 16, 2022, by Marco Hanson of Texan Translation. He shared a Word file with the 130 attendees, most of whom were professional translators and interpreters from around the United States and Mexico. The file contained a placed image of a Nuevo Leon birth certificate which had been altered in Photoshop to protect all personal information in the original. Using Zoom's Share Screen, he showed and discussed the translator's certification, notary public statement, and other pertinent features, then translated the JPG of the Spanish-language original into English on the following pages of the Word document. 
Marco described how to handle specific challenges like signatures, watermarks, rubber stamps, seals, proper names of countries and organizations, abbreviations, acronyms, bar codes, etc. He demonstrated how to create custom tables and adjust them in Word to keep the translation's format consistent with the original's. Attendees asked about the credentials needed to prepare certified translations in the US, and what common mistakes cause a translation to be rejected by the US Customs and Immigration Service. Some of the attendees caught typos he made while working live, underscoring the importance of proofreading your own translation and then getting an independent proofreader to go over it afterwards. This webinar was the first in a practical series on how to translate specific, common documents needed by immigrants to the US.
Marco is from Brownsville, Texas, has been working in Spanish translation and interpretation since 1999, and has a Master's degree in Spansh from the University of Texas Rio Grande. He is a Texas Master Licensed Court Interpreter (Spanish) and an American Translators Association Certified Translator (Spanish to English). Texan Translation is a family business he has owned with his wife, Margaret, since 2008. It has offices in Austin and Houston.