Macedonian Translation Services

Prism Language Solutions translates Macedonian into English for USCIS filings, courts, universities and attorneys, and English into Macedonian for US organizations. The usual items are izvod extracts from the registers of births, marriages and deaths, diplomas, police clearances and judgments, each delivered with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy. The first thing a translator should look at on a Macedonian document is not the name of the person. It is the name of the country.

Last reviewed September 12, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Language Solutions

The Macedonian-speaking community in the United States is measured in tens of thousands and sits in a few known places: the New York metropolitan area and northern New Jersey, the suburbs north of Detroit, Ohio's larger cities, Chicago and Fort Wayne. Second-generation Macedonian Americans work in English, so what reaches us is the paperwork of the older generation and of people petitioning for relatives still at home.

• 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

Two Country Names on One Macedonian Document Set

The Prespa Agreement with Greece entered into force in February 2019 and the country became the Republic of North Macedonia. Anything issued before that point carries the older name and is still a valid record of the event it registers. The transition had a deadline attached: under the agreement personal documents had to be replaced within five years, and passports, identity cards and driving licenses bearing the old name stopped being valid on 12 February 2024.

Certified Macedonian Translation of Izvod Extracts for USCIS

The core documents are the izvod extracts issued by the Registry Office from the registers of births, marriages and deaths. Recent ones are printed on a standard form; older ones are handwritten in Cyrillic, sometimes in a hand that has faded, with stamps and marginal entries recording a later marriage or a correction. All of it is translated, because 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3) asks for a complete English version and because the margin is often where the useful fact sits.

Where the applicant is one of the country's ethnic Albanian citizens the extract may be bilingual, Macedonian and Albanian in parallel columns. Both columns are rendered and the certificate says so. If the whole document is Albanian, that is a different assignment; see Albanian translation. Certificate format and delivery are covered at certified translation.

• Birth certificate and marriage certificate izvod extracts
• Death certificates and inheritance decisions for estates
• Police clearance certificates from the Ministry of the Interior
• Diplomas and transcripts from Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje and other institutions
• Court judgments, divorce decisions and property documents

Cyrillic Spelling and Passport Names on a Macedonian Certificate

Macedonian is written in its own Cyrillic alphabet, and the romanization on a modern passport is not the romanization on an older diploma. Passport transliteration drops the diacritics, so the letters that a university certificate may render with a hacek come out as ch, sh and zh instead. The result is one person with two Latin spellings across two documents in the same envelope.

In the body of the translation the applicant is spelled as the passport spells them, with the Cyrillic form and any alternative Latin spelling reproduced beside it and identified as the same name. Place names get the same discipline: Bitola, Tetovo and Gostivar are transliterated consistently and left alone rather than translated into anything.

Apostille on a Macedonian Record for a US Filing

North Macedonia has been bound by the Apostille Convention since 1991 by succession, so an apostille from the competent authority there is available on a civil record. USCIS does not require one, and paying for an apostille purely for an immigration filing is money spent on nothing. Where a court, a university or a foreign consulate has specifically asked for authentication, get the apostille attached before the document comes to us, so its wording is translated along with the certificate rather than in a second job. See apostille translation.

Macedonian Interpreters, Not Serbian or Bulgarian Substitutes

This is where the language is most often served badly. An agency that cannot find a Macedonian interpreter quickly will send a Serbian or Bulgarian speaker on the reasoning that they can follow the conversation. In a hospital corridor that usually passes. Under questioning it does not: Macedonian marks verb tenses that Serbian does not, it has a definite article, and courtroom vocabulary differs word for word.

There is a second question to ask before booking anyone. A large share of North Macedonia's citizens are ethnic Albanians, so for a speaker from Tetovo, Gostivar or Struga the right first question is which language they want to testify in. No state certifies court interpreters in Macedonian, and the national oral exam developed with the National Center for State Courts covers Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian but not Macedonian, so courts work from a qualified interpreter. See court interpreting and medical interpreting.

Macedonian Translation Cost and Turnaround

Printed Macedonian is a mid-priced European language: short certified pages from around $24.95 as a US market guide, running text from roughly $0.10 per source word. A one-page izvod is usually back within a business day. Handwritten Cyrillic from the 1960s costs more and takes longer, because deciphering it is the work rather than the translation. Judgments and multi-page academic records run two to five business days. Guide ranges are at pricing.

Questions we get asked