Translate Documents near Portland, Oregon

Who needs a translator in Portland

Portland is mostly English-speaking. Of 615,223 residents aged five and over, 109,644 speak another language at home, and 40,819 of those (6.6% of the city) speak English less than very well. Smaller numbers, but the documents they need certified are exactly the same ones.

The largest group is Spanish, with 42,130 speakers. It is not the whole picture: 7 separate language groups in Portland have a limited-English population in the thousands.

Languages spoken at home in Portland, and how many speakers report limited English

Language group	Speakers	Limited English
Spanish	42,130	14,547
Vietnamese	12,762	7,666
Other Asian and Pacific Island languages	10,786	3,281
Chinese (incl. Mandarin, Cantonese)	9,952	5,504
Russian, Polish, or other Slavic languages	8,678	4,044
Other Indo-European languages	6,826	1,647
Other and unspecified languages	5,939	2,052
French, Haitian, or Cajun	3,893	415
German or other West Germanic languages	3,202	223
Tagalog (incl. Filipino)	2,302	597
Arabic	1,939	526
Korean	1,235	317

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 Portland

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 Oregon 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

The USCIS office in Portland

Application Support Center - Portland, OR is at USCIS Application Support Center, 17112 SE Powell Boulevard, Suites 7-11, Portland, OR 97236.

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 Oregon documents

For documents issued in Oregon, the competent authority is Oregon 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 Portland: Spanish, Vietnamese, other Asian and Pacific Island languages. We cover more than 100 languages in total, listed on the languages page.