Asylum Claim Evidence Translation for Your Home Office Interview

Which documents can support your asylum claim

The Home Office decides your claim by looking at who you are and why you fear going back. Documents can help show your identity, your nationality and what happened to you. Most people ask us the same question first: which documents to support an asylum claim in the UK are worth translating?

The short answer is: any document you or your legal representative plan to send. The caseworker can only give weight to what they can read. The table below shows the documents we translate most often.

We translate documents. We do not decide which evidence helps your case. Ask your solicitor, or an adviser regulated by the Immigration Advice Authority (IAA, formerly the OISC), before you choose what to send.

Translating evidence before your substantive interview

The substantive interview is the main asylum interview. A Home Office caseworker asks detailed questions about your life and your fear of return. Many people want their evidence translated before this day.

Why timing matters

If your evidence arrives in English before the interview, the caseworker can read it and may ask you about it. A document that arrives later still counts, but you may have less chance to explain it. For this reason, asylum interview documents translation is best ordered as soon as you have the papers.

What to bring on the day

Your solicitor or the interview letter will tell you what to bring. Usually people bring the original documents and the English translations. Keep a copy of every translation for yourself. We send a PDF, so you can print extra copies at any time.

Why a full translation protects your credibility

Caseworkers look closely at whether your account is consistent. A partial translation can leave gaps. A name spelt differently on two documents can look like a mistake in your story. When you translate evidence for a Home Office interview with us, we translate every line and keep names spelt the same across all your documents. Tell us the spelling used on your Home Office papers, and we will follow it.

Each translation carries a signed certificate. It follows GOV.UK's certifying a document (opens in a new tab) guidance: the translator confirms it is a "true and accurate translation of the original document", with the date and the translator's full name and contact details.

Evidence deadlines after the interview

Sometimes the caseworker asks for more evidence after the interview. They may give you a date to send it. That date can be close, and documents often come from family abroad at short notice.

If you have a deadline:

1. Send us clear photos of every page as soon as the documents reach you.
2. Tell us the deadline date when you upload.
3. We confirm a delivery time before you pay.
4. We email the certified PDF to you, your solicitor, or both.

If the date is very close, use our urgent asylum document translation service. Short documents can often be done the same day, depending on the language.

If you cannot meet a Home Office deadline, speak to your legal representative straight away. Only they can advise you on asking for more time. If your claim is later refused and you appeal, the same translations can go into your bundle; our asylum appeal bundle translation page explains what the Tribunal needs.

How we translate stamps, seals and handwriting

Asylum evidence is rarely neat. Police papers from Pakistan are often handwritten in Urdu. Tazkiras carry stamps in Dari and Pashto. Letters from home may be torn, faded or photographed on a phone. The substantive interview documents we see often have all three problems.

Our translators follow the same rules on every document:

• Stamps and seals are translated in square brackets where they appear, for example [Round stamp: District Police Station, Quetta].
• Signatures are marked as [signature], so the reader knows one is there.
• Handwriting is translated in full, including notes in the margin.
• Text we cannot read is shown as [illegible], never guessed.
• Damaged areas are marked, for example [top corner torn, text missing].
• Dates in the Solar Hijri, Ethiopian or Islamic calendar are kept as written, with the Western date added in a translator's note.

This way the caseworker sees exactly what is on the original. Nothing is added and nothing is left out.

Sample

Certified translation

Supporting evidence: letter from a local official

Source language as on original → English

Document type

Letter of confirmation

Issued by

redacted

Addressed to

redacted

Date of letter

redacted

Subject

redacted

Reference number

redacted

Signatory

redacted

• [Letterhead: official heading, translated]
• [Round stamp: partly illegible]
• [Handwritten: note at foot of page, translated in full]

Translator's statement

I confirm that this is a true and accurate translation of the original document.

Date

DD/MM/YYYY

Translator

Full name

Signature

Age and identity evidence

Some claimants are told the Home Office or a local authority does not accept their age. Documents can then matter a great deal.

Paper Tazkiras from Afghanistan often show an age in a Solar Hijri year, for example "18 years old in 1395", rather than a full date of birth. We translate the age exactly as written and add the matching Western year in a note. We never turn an age into a date of birth, because that would change the evidence.

Other documents that can help with age and identity include birth certificates, school records, vaccination cards and family registers. Our ID card translation for asylum page explains how we handle each national ID format, including Iraqi documents after the CSID stopped being valid on 1 April 2024.

Human rights claims and trafficking (NRM) evidence

The same translation standard applies when your case is not only an asylum claim.

Human rights claims

Some people make a human rights claim, for example based on family life in the UK or a serious medical condition. Human rights claim evidence translation often covers medical records, marriage and birth certificates and letters from family. We certify each document in the same way.

Trafficking and modern slavery

If you have been referred to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), the UK's system for identifying victims of trafficking, you may have documents or messages that show what happened. NRM evidence translation needs particular care, because the content can be distressing. Our translators work in confidence, and you can ask for a translator of a particular gender, which we arrange wherever one is available.

Languages we translate for asylum claims

We translate evidence from the main languages spoken by people claiming asylum in the UK. Each language page explains the scripts, calendars and documents our translators know.

• Urdu asylum document translation: FIRs, CNICs, Nikah Namas and court papers from Pakistan.
• Arabic asylum document translation: documents from Sudan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen.
• Farsi asylum document translation: Shenasnamehs, Revolutionary Court papers and Sana notices from Iran.
• Tigrinya asylum document translation: Eritrean ID, baptism certificates and national service papers.
• Pashto and Dari translation: Tazkiras, threat letters and Taliban-era documents.
• Kurdish translation: Sorani, Kurmanji and Badini documents from Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.

We also translate Bengali, Amharic, Somali, Albanian, Vietnamese and many more. Prices depend on the number of pages and the language; see our asylum document translation prices or ask for a quote. Certified translation starts from £18 per page, or from £15 per document for ID cards and single certificates. Standard delivery is 1 working day for ID cards and certificates, and 2–3 working days for longer documents. Prices shown are starting prices and include VAT. We confirm your exact price in a written quote before any work starts.