Ukrainian Translation Services

Prism Language Solutions translates Ukrainian documents into English and English into Ukrainian for use in the United States. Most of it is certified: birth, marriage and divorce records from the civil registry, Soviet-era certificates printed in two languages, school and university papers, and PDFs exported from Diia. Each file comes back complete, with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy.

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

Since 2022 the Ukrainian files that reach us are put together under pressure. A sponsor is assembling a re-parole packet, a paralegal is filing for asylum, a caseworker is enrolling children in school, and the documents are whatever the family carried out or can get a relative to collect. Some of it is a crisp duplicate issued last month; some is a photograph of a 1974 certificate taken at an angle in a stairwell.

• 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 Ukrainian Translation for USCIS and Asylum Filings

A foreign-language document reaches USCIS only with a full English translation certified by the translator as complete and accurate, under 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3). No notary is required and no government body certifies the translator. Complete is the operative word: stamps, the reverse side, the registrar's block and any later annotation all get translated, because leaving them out is the quickest way to draw a Request for Evidence on an otherwise clean file.

Asylum and parole packets add material that is not a certificate at all. Medical reports, police reports, military summonses, news items and letters arrive without seals or standard layouts, and they still have to be rendered in full. See certified translation and USCIS translation.

• Birth certificates, Soviet originals and modern civil registry duplicates
• Marriage and divorce records, including court decisions dissolving a marriage
• Death certificates and, for deaths in occupied areas, the Ukrainian certificate issued after the fact was established
• Internal and foreign passports, ID cards and driver’s licenses
• Medical records and vaccination books for school enrollment and the immigration medical

Ukrainian Civil Registry and Vital Record Translation

Modern Ukrainian vital records come from the state registration offices of acts of civil status run under the Ministry of Justice, known by the Ukrainian initials DRATsS and often written DRACS in English. Two different things arrive from them and people mix them up: a certificate, meaning a replacement of the original record printed on a security form, and an extract from the State Register of Civil Status Acts, which is a printed statement of what the register holds and reads nothing like a certificate. Tell us which the receiving office asked for.

Ukraine is a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, so a current duplicate can be apostilled for use here. A Soviet original cannot, which is the practical reason a family is sometimes told to order a fresh duplicate even though the old certificate is genuine. Any apostille is translated with the document; see apostille translation.

Ukrainian Name Transliteration on a Certified Translation

Ukraine's official romanization was set by a Cabinet of Ministers resolution of 27 January 2010, and it is what the foreign passport uses: Oleksandr, Yevhen, Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia. The same person's Soviet certificate, romanized from the Russian column, gives Alexander, Evgeny and Kiev. Both spellings are defensible and only one matches the passport. We follow the passport for the header, transliterate each entry from its own source language, and put a note on the translation where the two disagree rather than picking a winner.

Two more traps are worth knowing before you compare documents. Ukrainian surnames in -skyi take a feminine form in -ska, so a husband and wife appear under different spellings of one family name and an officer reads it as a discrepancy. And the patronymic, the middle entry on every Ukrainian record, is not a middle name; US forms have nowhere sensible to put it.

Translating Ukrainian Documents Issued in Occupied Territory

Ukrainian law treats documents issued by occupation authorities as invalid, with a narrow exception for those recording a birth, a death or a marriage or its dissolution. Those facts can be brought onto the Ukrainian register, historically through a court application to establish the fact and more recently through an administrative route at the civil registry, after which a Ukrainian certificate is issued. That Ukrainian certificate is the document to file here.

Where a family only holds the occupation-issued paper, we translate exactly what is in front of us and name the issuing body as it prints itself, without dressing it up as a Ukrainian civil registry record. Your attorney then decides what to do with it.

Ukrainian Diia Documents and Diploma Translation

Diia, the government app, carries digital versions of the ID card, the foreign passport, the birth certificate, the tax number and the driver's license, and Ukrainian law gives them the same force as the plastic. What reaches us is a shared PDF with a QR code and a validity window. We translate it as the document it is, keeping the QR block and the issue stamp visible, and note that the source was a digital copy.

Education credentials joined the app in 2024, covering diplomas from 2000 onward and school leaving certificates. Records held in the temporarily occupied territories may not be in the national education database at all, which is when a university asks for an archival reference instead. See diploma translation and academic transcript translation.

Ukrainian Translation Cost and Turnaround

Ukrainian sits in the middle of the range: the US translator pool is deep enough to be quick and small enough that a weekend rush costs something. Certified certificates follow the per-page guide, from around $24.95 per page as a US market figure, and longer material is priced per source word. A clean civil registry certificate is usually back inside 24 hours of a confirmed quote. A faded Soviet certificate photographed on a phone is the job that runs long, because someone has to read it before anyone can translate it. Ranges are on the pricing page.

If the matter also needs someone in the room or on the line, for a hearing, a deposition or a hospital appointment, we book that from the same network: court interpreting, medical interpreting and USCIS interview interpreting. Say whether the speaker wants to work in Ukrainian or in Russian, and we will follow the answer rather than the intake form.

Questions we get asked