Translate Documents near New York City

Who needs a translator in New York City

New York City is one of the more multilingual places we work in. Of 8,017,969 residents aged five and over, 1,771,089 report speaking English less than very well, which is 22.1% of the city. Demand for certified translation here is steady rather than occasional, and it runs across 12 separate language groups rather than one.

The largest group is Spanish, with 1,822,137 speakers. It is not the whole picture: 12 separate language groups in New York City have a limited-English population in the thousands.

Languages spoken at home in New York City, and how many speakers report limited English

Language group	Speakers	Limited English
Spanish	1,822,137	829,668
Chinese (incl. Mandarin, Cantonese)	490,368	324,546
Other Indo-European languages	448,303	184,796
Russian, Polish, or other Slavic languages	282,739	151,497
French, Haitian, or Cajun	186,456	59,918
Other and unspecified languages	159,765	46,048
German or other West Germanic languages	129,356	52,496
Other Asian and Pacific Island languages	89,676	41,686
Arabic	80,347	29,386
Korean	60,290	32,077
Tagalog (incl. Filipino)	48,443	12,805
Vietnamese	11,252	6,166

Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2023 5-Year Estimates, table C16001. "Limited English" is the Census category for speaking English less than very well. Several rows are combined groups rather than single languages, so the totals cover a family of languages. We translate the individual languages inside each group.

Getting a document certified from New York City

There is no walk-in office here and none is needed. You upload the file, we return a PDF you can print, and the certification carries the same weight whether the translator sat in New York or in New York. Our office at 55 Broadway in New York handles paper in person if you prefer that.

What a certified translation has to contain, what USCIS accepts, and what it costs are the same everywhere, so they are covered once on the pages that own them rather than repeated here:

• How certified translation works, including the wording USCIS requires
• Birth certificates, the most common document in an immigration file
• Marriage certificates and divorce decrees
• Diplomas and transcripts for credential evaluation
• Apostilles, a separate step that is often mistaken for certification

Nearest USCIS office

New York City has no USCIS office of its own. The closest one is in Brooklyn, New York, about 4 miles away: Application Support Center - Brooklyn, NY, USCIS Application Support Center, 1260-1278 60th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11219.

An Application Support Center handles biometrics, not interviews. Translations are filed with your paperwork either way. Address from USCIS; check your own appointment notice before travelling.

Apostilles for New York documents

For documents issued in New York, the competent authority is New York Secretary of State. Not us: an apostille authenticates the original document, while certification covers the translation. How the two fit together.

Authority per the Hague Conference registry, which is not the Secretary of State in every state.

Languages most asked for in New York City: Spanish, Chinese, other Indo-European languages. We cover more than 100 languages in total, listed on the languages page.