Guide
Israeli documents in a USCIS filing: what has to be translated, and how
Every Hebrew document filed with USCIS has to arrive with a full English translation and a signed certification from the translator. The regulation that says so is one sentence long. It does not ask for a notary, it does not ask for an apostille, and it does not allow a summary. Here is what it does require, which Israeli documents an E-2, EB-5 or adjustment-of-status file is built from, what a translation has to get right to survive being read closely, and what the work costs.
The question everyone asks: does USCIS want a notary?
For a filing made with USCIS, no. The whole of the translation requirement is 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3), and it reads: "Translations. Any document containing foreign language submitted to USCIS shall be accompanied by a full English language translation which the translator has certified as complete and accurate, and by the translator's certification that he or she is competent to translate from the foreign language into English."
That is the entire paragraph. No accreditation, no register to be listed on, no residency requirement, no seal — and no notary. The USCIS Policy Manual restates the same two certifications and adds one thing the regulation leaves out: only extracts prepared by an authorized official — the keeper of the record — are acceptable, and "a summary of a document prepared by a translator is unacceptable."
This is not an argument against notaries. Notarial certification is a real instrument, and other bodies — an Israeli bank, a court, an authority abroad — do sometimes require it, at a fee set by regulation that rises with the length of the document. If the body in front of you asks for it, get the request in writing and match it. If you are filing with USCIS, the paragraph above is what is required.
The current form instructions are more prescriptive about the certificate itself. The I-864 instructions say the certification "must include their signature, printed name, the signature date and their contact information," and the I-485, I-526E and N-400 instructions require the same four elements in slightly different wording. Four elements, and nothing else is enumerated.
Signature
The translator signs the certification personally. Not the applicant, not the attorney, not the agency that brokered the job.
Printed name
The signature is not expected to be legible; the printed name is what identifies the person standing behind the translation.
The signature date
The date the certification was signed — which is not necessarily the date on the document being translated, and not the filing date.
Contact information
A means of reaching the translator. The form instructions require it; the regulation itself does not mention it, so a certificate built only from the regulation can be missing the one element the instructions add.
And an apostille? It is not part of a translation
An apostille is not something a translator issues, and it does not authenticate a translation. It authenticates an original public document — or a notary's signature — for use in another country, so it goes on the Hebrew original or on a notary's certification — which is how a notarized translation can carry one; the apostille authenticates the notary's signature, never the accuracy of the translation. Neither 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3) nor the form instructions mention one in connection with a translation. In Israel you obtain it yourself: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for an original public document, a Magistrates' Court for a notary's certification — the two routes are not interchangeable. If some other authority in your file does ask for an apostille, that is its requirement: get the wording in writing and follow it.
Which situation are you in?
Three of the sections below are mutually exclusive, and most readers need only one of them. Skip to yours.
USCIS, the Tel Aviv branch office and the consular stage are not one thing
Israeli paperwork bound for the United States can end up in three different reading rooms, and they publish different instructions. Knowing which one your documents are going to is what stops you translating the wrong set, or paying for certification nobody asked for.
Filings made with USCIS
I-130, I-129F, I-485 adjustment of status, I-751, N-400 naturalization, I-526E. These are governed by 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3), quoted in full above. It carries no language exception of any kind: a Hebrew document filed with USCIS arrives with a full English translation and the translator's certification, or it arrives incomplete.
E-1 and E-2 treaty packages
Filed with the U.S. Embassy's branch office in Tel Aviv, which publishes its own required-documents lists for treaty trader and treaty investor applications. Those lists state that all documents must be submitted in English, and that some — the example given is printouts from the company's register — may be submitted in Hebrew with an English translation.
The consular stage
Immigrant-visa processing and the interview run on separate instructions published by the post handling the case, and those differ from post to post. Read the checklist your own post publishes and follow that — it is the one that governs.
"A summary of a document prepared by a translator is unacceptable"
That sentence is the Policy Manual's, and it is the one most often missed. A bank statement rendered as an opening balance, a closing balance and a total is not a translation of a bank statement. A payslip whose separately coded deduction lines have been collapsed into a single line reading "deductions" is not a translation of a payslip.
So the boring parts get translated too: column headings, footnotes, the small print under a table, the stamp in the corner, the handwritten note in the margin. Figures themselves do not change from one language to the other, but nearly everything around them does — transaction descriptions, counterparty and employer names, the labels that say which number is which. A document that is mostly numbers is not therefore mostly translated.
A missing block is also visible on the page without reading a word of Hebrew, which makes it a poor thing to gamble on: the English and the Hebrew sit side by side in the file.
E-2 and E-1: the file the Tel Aviv branch office asks for
The branch office publishes a required-documents list for treaty investor (E-2) and treaty trader (E-1) applications, and almost every item on it exists in Israel only in Hebrew. It is a bank-statement-and-financial-statement job with a corporate registry document stapled to the front.
Two sentences from those pages are worth knowing before you plan the package. The first: "All documents must be submitted in English. Some documents such as printouts from the company's register may be submitted in Hebrew with an English translation." The second concerns size — the maximum size of a mailed package is 150 single-sided pages, and "translations from Hebrew to English will also not be counted toward the 150 page requirement."
Read plainly: the post sets a page budget and then takes the translations out of it. Whatever else that means, it means no page is saved by translating less.
The CPA letter
A formal letter from the company's accountant giving the nature of the company, its structure, the distribution of ownership and the nationality of the shareholders. The list asks for a CPA letter; it does not specify letterhead.
The Registrar of Companies extract (נסח חברה)
Asked for as a translated copy showing the shareholders and their percentage of the stock, in the specific ownership branches the list names — a company ultimately owned by other Israeli companies or by a consortium, and a public limited company. Where the company holds a registered English name of its own, that name is used — a matter of record rather than a transliteration decision.
Share certificates, the shareholder register, minutes and agreements
Stock certificates, the register of shareholders, minutes of the annual shareholders' meeting, and any partnership or joint-venture agreement.
Proof of the investment
Bank wire transfers, canceled checks, and the debits and credits across the investor's and the business's accounts that show the money actually moved.
The source-of-funds trail
Where the invested money came from: the sale of a property, an inheritance, a loan, accumulated earnings, the sale of a business — each with its own Israeli paperwork.
Audited financial statements and the balance sheet
The most recent audited annual financial report and balance sheet, plus the latest financial statement.
The payroll register
Records of salaries paid, employee data and rates of pay — in Israel that means the payroll report, the payslips behind it and the annual Form 106 certificates (the annual employer certificate).
The lease and the invoices
A signed, dated lease for the business premises with evidence of the payments under it; invoices of sales with evidence of payment; and the business account's transaction records.
The business license
The license, permit or proof of registration the business operates on — in Israel usually an authorized-dealer or exempt-dealer certificate alongside any municipal license.
EB-5: seven years of Israeli tax filings, and the money trail
The I-526E instructions set out what has to accompany the petition to show that the invested capital was obtained through lawful means: "foreign business registration records, tax returns of any kind filed by you or on your behalf within the last seven years in or outside the United States", evidence of other sources of capital, certified copies of any judgments, and evidence of pending or past administrative, civil and criminal actions. Where the funds were gifted or borrowed, the instructions also ask for evidence from the donor or, where the lender is not a bank, from the lender that those funds were lawfully obtained.
For an Israeli petitioner that reads as seven years of tax assessments and filed returns, Israeli company registration records, and a documented trail for every step the money took — a property sale, a business sale, a distribution, an inheritance, years of salary. It is filed with USCIS, so all of it sits under 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3): full translation, no summaries.
The hard part of a source-of-funds file is not any single document. It is that a running balance has to reconcile across years of statements from different banks, and that one employer, one counterparty, one account has to read identically in every document in the set. Translated piecemeal, over months, by different hands, it usually doesn't — and the inconsistency is what gets asked about.
Adjustment of status and the I-864
This is the part of the family route filed with USCIS, and it is where Israeli documents genuinely enter an affidavit of support. The core evidence for a sponsor is a US federal tax return, and the I-864 instructions actively push foreign returns away: do not submit tax returns filed with a foreign government, unless you were not required to file a US federal return and are relying on the foreign one to establish income not subject to US tax.
Two routes bring Hebrew paperwork in anyway. The first is a sponsor living in Israel, which is common among Israeli applicants. Current income is then evidenced the Israeli way — but read how the instructions put it, because they are permissive rather than prescriptive: "You are not required to submit this evidence, however, unless specifically instructed to do so by a U.S. Government official." What follows is a list of examples: a recent letter from your employer showing the employer's address and telephone number and stating your annual salary, and pay stubs showing your income for the previous six months. Six months of Israeli payslips is not an unusual thing to send; it is the example the instructions themselves give.
The second route is the one Israelis most often overlook, and it carries a test worth applying before you pay to translate anything. The instructions provide that the assets of the intending immigrant may be used "regardless of where he or she resides" — that phrase is about where the person lives, not about where the asset sits. The limit is stated separately: "Only assets that can be converted into cash within one year and without considerable hardship or financial loss" to the owner may be included. Bank statements and securities accounts will usually clear that test. An Israeli provident fund (קופת גמל) or pension fund often will not, because the money is locked until retirement age and early release is penalized; a study fund (קרן השתלמות) will not until it matures. Apply the one-year test to the asset first, and translate what passes it.
What our certificate actually says
The certificate is one signed page, available on request. The translator's attestation on it is a fixed text, and it reads in full: "I, Aaron Lawrence, translator for Lawrence Corporate Translations Ltd., hereby certify that the attached English translation of the document(s) described below is, to the best of my knowledge and ability, a true, complete and accurate translation of the original Hebrew document(s) provided to me, and that I am competent to translate from Hebrew into English. I make no representation as to the authenticity of the original document(s)."
The regulation names two certifications — complete and accurate, and competent to translate. The certificate addresses each in the wording quoted above: the completeness-and-accuracy attestation in its qualified form, and the competence statement in the regulation's own terms. Around them it sets out a certificate number and a date of issue, a description of the documents, the number of pages, the source and target languages, and the four elements the form instructions enumerate: the translator's signature, printed name and title, the signature date, and contact information — our street address and telephone number in Israel, an email address and the website.
Where you send us an original file, the certificate also records that file's name and its SHA-256 fingerprint, so the certification is tied to one exact file rather than to a description of one. The footer invites the receiving institution to confirm the certificate with us by email, quoting the certificate number — a check anyone reading the file can make without going through you.
It is a translator's self-certification and says so on its face. If your attorney, or the instructions for the form you are filing, specify particular certification wording, send that wording to us with the documents — it is far easier to settle before the certificate is issued than after.
Why the arithmetic matters more than the turnaround
Immigration translation is sold on speed. The work that decides whether a financial file holds up is not fast work, and it is worth being honest about the trade.
A transposed digit in a balance sheet is invisible to someone proofreading for English, and entirely visible to anyone testing whether an E-2 investment is marginal. A running balance that does not carry across a year of statements raises the exact question a source-of-funds file exists to close. A misread digit in an Israeli ID number propagates through every document in the package and quietly turns one person into two.
So every figure is re-read from the source and reconciled against the totals; identity, ID and account numbers are re-read independently rather than proofread once; and the structure of the original is kept — same table, same columns, same order — so the English can be set beside the Hebrew and followed by someone who reads no Hebrew at all. A large package is not a same-day job and we will not pretend otherwise. Anything we cannot read with certainty is flagged to you rather than guessed at, and the certificate names the person who did the work rather than a desk.
Sending the file
Send documents as the issuer produced them. A PDF downloaded from your bank's or your employer's site is far better than a photograph of a printout, because the text in it is real text — legible, and safe to reproduce exactly. If a scan is all you have, send it and say so.
Send the whole set together where you can. One spelling per name, one form per employer, one rendering per counterparty across the entire package is much easier to guarantee when everything is translated at once — and in an immigration file, that consistency is one of the things being checked.
What it costs. Our per-document prices are published in full on the pricing page: a payslip from ₪99 including VAT (₪85 each for three or more), Form 106 from ₪149, a bank statement of up to three pages from ₪129, a tax assessment from ₪189, and a signed certificate of accuracy included on request. Those are starting prices for standard single-page documents; longer or more complex ones are quoted by length, and a large package is quoted in full before any work begins. Most quotes come back within a few hours and always within two business days.
Immigration packages carry passports, tax records and a full source-of-funds trail. Your documents are handled in strict confidence — used only to prepare your translations, and never published, shared, or reused for anyone else. If your attorney has given you a filing date, put it in your message and we will say plainly whether it can be met.
Where we checked
Everything quoted above was read from the publishers' own texts in July 2026: 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3); the USCIS Policy Manual; the instructions to Form I-864 (edition 10/17/24) and to Forms I-485, I-526E and N-400 (edition 01/20/25); and the required-documents lists the U.S. Embassy's branch office in Tel Aviv publishes for treaty trader and treaty investor applications.
Form instructions are reissued from time to time, and the edition in force is the one printed on the form you download. Check the edition date on your own instructions and follow those.
Common questions
Does USCIS require a notarized translation?
No. The requirement is 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3), which asks for a full English translation plus the translator's certification that it is complete and accurate and that the translator is competent to translate from the foreign language into English. There is no notary in that paragraph, none in the Policy Manual's treatment of translations, and none among the four certificate elements the current form instructions enumerate — signature, printed name, signature date, contact information. Notarial certification is a real instrument that other institutions sometimes do require; a USCIS filing is not one of those cases. If some other body in your file asks for it, get that request in writing and match it.
Is an apostille needed for a translation filed with USCIS?
No. An apostille authenticates an original public document, or a notary's signature, for use in another country — it is done to the Israeli original or to a notary's certification — which is how a notarized translation can carry one — and a translator does not issue one; it authenticates the signature, never the accuracy of the translation. Neither 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3) nor the form instructions mention an apostille in connection with a translation. In Israel you obtain one yourself: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for an original public document, a Magistrates' Court for a notary's certification.
Can I translate my own documents for USCIS?
Nothing in 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3) or the Policy Manual bars it. What is true is that the certification is a statement about competence and accuracy made by the person who did the work. A translation signed by someone with an interest in the outcome raises that question, and in practice the answer arrives as a request for evidence. An independent translator removes the question rather than answering it.
Do the numbers on an Israeli bank statement need translating?
The figures themselves do not change, but everything around them does: column headings, transaction descriptions, counterparty and employer names, the notes under the table, the bank's own stamp. And the Policy Manual is explicit that a summary prepared by a translator is unacceptable — a statement reduced to a balance and a total is not a translation of that statement, however accurate the two numbers are.
What has to be in the translator's certificate?
The current form instructions — for the I-864, the I-485, the I-526E and the N-400 — all state that the certification must include the translator's signature, printed name, the signature date and their contact information. Ours carries all four, the contact information being a street address and a telephone number in Israel alongside an email address and the website. It also states, as the regulation asks, that the translator is competent to translate from Hebrew into English — and it sets out a certificate number, the date of issue, a description of the documents, the page count, the source and target languages and, where you send us the original file, that file's SHA-256 fingerprint. It is a translator's self-certification and states on its face that it is not a notarized, sworn or court-certified translation.
Which Israeli documents go into an E-2 package?
The branch office's own list runs to a CPA letter, the Registrar of Companies extract, share certificates and the shareholder register, proof of the investment through wire transfers and account records, the source-of-funds trail behind it, audited financial statements and the balance sheet, the payroll register with the payslips and Form 106 certificates behind it, the lease for the premises, sales invoices with proof of payment, and the business license. In Israel every one of those exists in Hebrew.
We received a request for evidence about a translation. What now?
Send us the request itself along with the document. Its wording is what has to be matched — which document is at issue, and whether the objection is to completeness, to the certificate, or to both. Where material was dropped, the fix is a complete translation of the whole document rather than a patch on the old one, delivered with a certificate carrying the four elements the instructions require.
Israeli documents heading into a USCIS filing?
Print-ready PDF · handled in confidence · a few days for most jobs