Chinese Translation Services

Prism Language Solutions translates Chinese documents into English and English documents into Chinese for filings in the United States. Mainland paperwork is usually a notarial certificate from a notary public office plus the household register; Taiwan work comes as a household registration transcript; Hong Kong records come from the Immigration Department. Each is delivered as a full English translation with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy, and short certificates are normally back within 24 hours.

Last reviewed September 11, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Language Solutions

Chinese is the language where the document itself surprises people most. An applicant asks for a birth certificate translation and discovers that the People's Republic does not issue one in the form an American expects. What exists instead is a gong zheng shu, a notarial certificate produced by a local notary public office, which recites the facts of the birth and attests to them. The State Department reciprocity schedule for China says exactly that. It is not an extract from a civil registry, and a translation that calls it one misdescribes the evidence.

• Certified translations prepared to meet USCIS requirements
• Human linguists only, matched to the subject
• Fixed written quote within 60 minutes in business hours
• One office in New York, linguists in every state

Certified Chinese Translation for USCIS

Most mainland filings arrive as a small stack: one or more notarial certificates and the hukou, the household register booklet that records everyone at an address, their relationships and their registration history. It is handwritten in places and stamped in others, and the pages people forget to scan carry the change-of-address entries an officer wants to see. We translate every page sent and render each red seal rather than calling it illegible.

Since November 2023 the Apostille Convention has been in force for mainland China, so a notarial certificate that once needed consular legalization now travels on an apostille. That apostille gets translated too. See certified translation, USCIS translation and apostille translation.

• Notarial certificates of birth, marriage, kinship, no criminal record and degree (birth, marriage, police clearance)
• Household register (hukou) booklets, every page
• Divorce certificates and court judgments (divorce decree translation)
• Passports and resident identity cards
• Bank statements and employment letters for an affidavit of support

Simplified and Traditional Chinese Translation

Translating out of Chinese, the script is not a decision: mainland documents are Simplified, records from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau are Traditional, and both become English. The script is a real choice only in the other direction, when a hospital consent form or a school notice has to be produced in Chinese. Then the question is who reads it. Simplified text handed to an elderly Hong Kong reader is readable the way a crossword is readable: possible, slow, and not what you want on a consent form. We set the script to the audience, and where one text must serve both communities the honest answer is two versions.

Chinese Names on a Certified Document Translation

Name handling causes more queries on Chinese filings than anything else. The family name comes first, so the person a US form calls Wei Zhang appears on the register as Zhang Wei, and a translator who quietly flips the order has changed the evidence. Romanization multiplies it: a mainland passport uses Hanyu Pinyin, an older Taiwan or Hong Kong record may use Wade-Giles or a Cantonese spelling, and one family's papers can carry three versions of the same character.

We transcribe the characters as printed, give the romanization the source uses, and show the passport spelling alongside where they differ. We do not harmonize them. A mismatch is a fact the attorney needs.

Taiwan and Hong Kong Chinese Document Translation

Taiwan work runs on the household registration transcript from a local Household Registration Office. The State Department reciprocity schedule for Taiwan is blunt: birth certificates are not accepted for Taiwan nationals born there, and the individual transcript with full remarks is what counts. The remarks column carries the legal content, recording marriages, divorces, adoptions and name changes, and it is the part most often cropped out of a scan.

Hong Kong is different again. Birth, marriage and death certificates come from the Immigration Department in a format closer to what an American reader expects, and the Apostille Convention has applied there for decades. Older Hong Kong certificates already carry English; we still translate the Chinese side, because the two faces do not always agree.

Chinese Diploma and Academic Transcript Translation

Chinese higher education issues two separate pieces of paper for one course of study, and applicants routinely send one. The graduation certificate records that the program was completed; the degree certificate records that a degree was conferred. CHSI, the Ministry of Education's student information center, treats them as distinct credentials, and it is possible to hold one without the other. Evaluators such as WES ask for both plus the transcript, so a package built on the degree certificate alone stalls. We keep the Chinese degree names as they stand with a translator's note. See diploma translation and academic transcript translation.

Chinese Legal and Business Document Translation

Attorneys send contracts, corporate records, arbitration awards and discovery; companies send supplier agreements and compliance files. The recurring issue is the company chop. A Chinese contract is bound by its seal at least as much as by a signature, and the characters inside a round red chop are often the only place the registered company name appears in full. We read the chop and translate it. A translation showing a signature line and no seal leaves a US attorney arguing about execution for no reason. More on the legal translation and business translation pages.

Chinese Translation Cost and Turnaround

Chinese is quoted from the character count, which is why a one-page contract can cost more than its length suggests: Chinese compresses, and the English runs longer. Short certified documents follow the per-page guide, from around $24.95 per page in the US market; longer material is quoted per source unit from about $0.12. A notarial certificate with a few hukou pages is usually delivered inside 24 hours; contracts and transcripts take two to five business days. Handwriting in an older register slows things, and we say so in the quote rather than after. Ranges are on the pricing page.

Chinese Interpreters for Court, Hospital and USCIS Appointments

Interpreting is where the spoken variety decides everything, and booking a Chinese interpreter without naming it is the mistake we spend most time correcting. Mandarin covers most mainland and Taiwanese speakers, Cantonese covers Guangdong and Hong Kong, and some older immigrants work in Toisanese, Fuzhounese, Hokkien or Shanghainese and will follow a Mandarin interpreter only partly, which is worse than not following at all. Ask where the family is from first. See Mandarin interpreters, Cantonese interpreters or court interpreting.

Questions we get asked