Sinhala Translation Services

Prism Language Solutions translates Sinhala documents into English for immigration filings, universities, employers and courts, and English into Sinhala on request. Each certified job is delivered with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy. Sri Lankan records come out of a registry that has been running since the nineteenth century in three languages, so the first thing we establish is which language your certificate is actually in.

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

Sinhala is spoken by the majority of Sri Lankans and almost nowhere else, which makes the translator pool small and the document set unusually consistent. Most of what we see is family immigration, students heading to US universities, and professionals whose employer needs a clean set of civil records. It is orderly work compared with much of what crosses this desk, and the mistakes that do happen are predictable.

The common one is a name, not a sentence. A Sinhalese name on a birth certificate can run to six or seven words, of which only one is the given name, and a US form has two boxes. What the translator does with that gap decides whether the file reads as one person or two.

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

Sinhala and Tamil on Sri Lankan Certificates

Sri Lanka has two official languages, Sinhala and Tamil, and English works alongside them in administration. A civil record is written in the language of the office that registered it, so a certificate from Kandy or Matara is normally Sinhala and one from Jaffna or Batticaloa normally Tamil, with older documents sometimes carrying two or three languages on one page.

Send us the document rather than the label. We have had files described as Sinhala that were Tamil, and bilingual certificates where only half was translated by a previous provider, which is the version that gets sent back. Where both scripts appear we translate both. The Tamil side of Sri Lankan work is covered on the Tamil translation page.

Certified Sinhala Translation for USCIS and Family Petitions

A complete English translation of each foreign-language document is required under 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3), certified by a translator competent in both languages. Complete includes the registrar’s declaration, the serial and volume references, the office stamp and anything written on the reverse. Our certificate is described on the certified translation page, and the set each petition needs under USCIS translation.

Birth certificates and register extracts from a Divisional Secretariat
Marriage certificates, including Kandyan and general registrations
Death certificates and estate papers
Police clearance certificates and court documents
School reports, examination certificates and degrees

Sinhala Birth Certificates from the Registrar General’s Department

Civil registration in Sri Lanka runs through the Registrar General’s Department, and a certified copy is obtained from the Registrar Division of a Divisional Secretariat, with a one-day service where the entry is already in the department’s electronic records and a slower route back to the secretariat that originally registered it where it is not. Sri Lankan missions abroad take requests as well, which is how most of our clients get theirs.

Two features of these certificates trip people up. The first is that a copy issued this year prints this year’s date on a birth registered decades ago, which is ordinary and needs no explaining away. The second is the informant column, naming the person who reported the birth and their relationship to the child. It is genuine content and we translate it, along with every handwritten correction and marginal note, marking anything illegible rather than deciding what it probably says.

Sinhala Names, Ge Names and the Passport Surname Box

A traditional Sinhalese name leads with a lineage element, the ge name, often ending in -ge or -lage, sometimes with a vasagama indicating the ancestral village and occasionally a patabendi name inherited from a title conferred generations ago. The given name comes last, and a family name may follow it. Younger, urban families frequently drop the ge name altogether.

So one person can be recorded in full on a birth certificate, in initials on a school record, and truncated to fit a passport, with the surname box holding something that is not a surname in any sense a US officer would recognize. We reproduce the name in full and in the order the certificate prints it, show the passport form alongside, and explain the elements in a translator’s note. We never reorder a Sinhalese name to look more like an American one. Attorneys running a family batch should see immigration attorneys.

Sinhala Academic Records for US Universities and Employers

Sri Lankan schooling ends in the GCE Ordinary Level and Advanced Level examinations run by the Department of Examinations under the Ministry of Education, and candidates sit them in Sinhala, Tamil or English medium. A Sinhala-medium certificate and the school records behind it need translating; an English-medium one does not, and we will say so.

University degrees and transcripts are frequently issued in English already, so the translation work is usually a Sinhala-medium school leaving certificate, a character certificate, or a subject-by-subject statement. Marks and subject names appear as printed, and the US equivalence is left to the credential evaluator, which is what evaluators actually want. See academic transcript translation.

Legalization of Sri Lankan Documents Before Sinhala Translation

No apostille exists for a Sri Lankan document, because the country is not a contracting party to the Convention. Authentication runs the older route: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Colombo, then the mission of the country that will receive the document. That has to be done in Sri Lanka, before the paper travels, so the attestations are on the page when it reaches us and form part of the certified set. A US immigration filing calls for none of it; it calls for a complete certified translation. See apostille translation.

Sinhala Translation Cost and Turnaround

A printed Sinhala certificate is normally delivered within 24 hours of a confirmed quote. Older handwritten register extracts, and anything with corrections written over the entry, take two to three business days because reading the hand is most of the work. A certified page is quoted from around $24.95 as a US market guide, with continuous text priced by the source word. Figures are on the pricing page, and a deadline can be handled through rush translation.

Ready to start? Send the document or the booking details through the quote form, call +1 (833) 282 8883, or email info@prismlinguistics.com. You get a fixed written price within 60 minutes during business hours.

Questions we get asked

My Sri Lankan birth certificate was issued last month although I was born in 1982. Is that a problem?

No. Sri Lanka issues certified copies from the register, so a recent issue date on an old registration is normal. The translation shows the date of birth, the date of registration and the date the copy was issued, each as printed, which is exactly what a reviewing officer expects to see.

How do you translate a long Sinhalese name with a ge name in it?

In full and in the order the certificate prints it, with the passport version shown alongside and a note explaining which element is the lineage or ge name and which is the given name. We do not shuffle the parts to fit American surname conventions, because that is what creates a mismatch.

Do I need a Sinhala translation if my degree is already in English?

No, and we will tell you before quoting. Sri Lankan universities often issue in English, and English-medium examination certificates need no translator. What usually does need one is a Sinhala-medium school record, a character certificate or a civil registry extract in Sinhala.

Does a Sri Lankan document need an apostille before translation?

There is no apostille for Sri Lanka, since it is not a contracting party to the Convention. Where a receiving body wants authentication, the document goes through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Colombo and then the relevant mission, and that is arranged in Sri Lanka before the document is sent for translation.