Czech Translation Services

Prism Language Solutions translates Czech documents into English and English documents into Czech for immigration filings, US courts, credential evaluations and companies with Czech operations. Certified files come with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy prepared to meet USCIS requirements. A single registry certificate is usually delivered the next working day.

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

Since January 2022 a change to the registry law lets any Czech woman register the masculine form of her surname without giving a reason, where before she had to show a connection abroad. The practical result for anyone assembling a file today is a person who is Nováková on a 1994 birth certificate, Novak on a US green card, and possibly Novák on a Czech passport renewed last year. Each document is translated with the ending it actually carries, and the explanation goes in a translator’s note instead of one form being picked and imposed on the whole file.

• 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 Czech Matrika Certificate Translation for USCIS

Czech civil records come from a matrika, the registry office at the municipality where the event was recorded, and arrive as a rodný list, an oddací list or an úmrtní list. The forms are compact and the substance sits in the margins and the reverse: the book, volume and page of the entry, the registrar’s stamp, and later annotations recording a divorce, an adoption or a name change.

One Czech quirk catches people out. Births, marriages and deaths of Czech citizens that happened outside the country are recorded not locally but in the Special Registry at the Brno-Centre district office, which then issues the certificate. So a client born in Vienna or Chicago to Czech parents may hold a Czech certificate that names Brno and has nothing to do with the family’s home town. The issuing office is translated exactly as it appears on the page. What the signed certificate contains is on the certified translation page, with the document list by form under USCIS translation.

• Matrika birth, marriage and death certificates
• Divorce judgments from a Czech district court
• Criminal record extracts from the Register of Criminal Records
• Passports, identity cards and driver’s licenses
• Notarial deeds and powers of attorney for Czech property

Czech Apostille and Certified Document Translation

Czechia has been an Apostille Convention party since 1999 and uses two competent authorities. Judicial documents, and documents issued or certified by notaries with them, are apostilled by the Ministry of Justice. Everything else, registry certificates and administrative documents included, goes to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Two offices, one question to answer before you set out.

A US immigration filing does not need any of it. The apostille matters when a Czech document has to be recognized by a foreign authority, or when American paperwork is going to a Czech registry or court, in which case the US document is apostilled by the issuing state first. See apostille translation and notarized translation.

Czech Diploma and Nostrification Document Translation

Czech marks run the opposite way to American ones and the two school levels do not even match each other. Secondary schools grade from 1 to 5, where 1 is výborně and 5 is the fail. Universities mostly grade from 1 to 4, where 1 is again the best and 4 is the fail. A transcript of ones and twos is an outstanding record, and an evaluator reading it as an American scale sees the opposite.

So we print the Czech word next to every number and state the direction of the scale on the face of the translation rather than in a footnote nobody reads. Degree abbreviations stay as awarded. The same literalism applies to files going the other way for nostrification, where a Czech institution is recognizing an American qualification and wants the course list, the class hours and the grading scale rendered rather than interpreted. See diploma translation and academic transcript translation.

Czech Company and Legal Document Translation

Commercial Czech work is steady and mostly industrial: automotive and machinery suppliers, engineering documentation, distribution agreements, employment paperwork for staff moving in either direction, and the commercial register extracts that sit behind all of it. A register extract identifies a company by its identification number and lists its officers, its registered capital and the scope of its business, and a translation that gives the trading name and skips the fields has thrown away the reason the document was requested.

Litigation and probate come through as well, generally a Czech judgment being recognized here or an estate with property in both countries. We leave statutory citations in their Czech form with the article numbering intact. More on legal translation and business translation.

Czech Translation Cost and Turnaround

A certified page runs from roughly $24.95 as a US market guide, with running text from about $0.13 per source word. One registry certificate is out inside 24 hours. What stretches a Czech job is rarely the language and usually the document: long notarial deeds, technical specifications with drawings, and pre-1945 parish records in German script, which need transcription before translation and are quoted from the scan. See pricing for the ranges.

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