EL SALVADOR · CERTIFIED TRANSLATION
Certified Translation of El Salvador Documents for USCIS
Salvadoran civil records are issued by the municipal Registro del Estado Familiar at each city hall (alcaldía), with the RNPN acting as the national backbone that centralizes birth, marriage and death entries — and USCIS wants every one of them rendered fully into English with a signed Certificate of Accuracy. Because El Salvador is a Hague Apostille country, your partida de nacimiento or PNC solvencia can be apostilled by the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores rather than pushed through consular legalization. The details that trip filers up are Salvadoran two-surname naming (paternal then maternal), handwritten small-town register entries, and the December 2024 shift toward recording divorces as marginal notes on the original marriage certificate instead of as standalone decrees. Translation HelpDesk handles all of it with native-Spanish specialists who read archaic and handwritten Salvadoran records correctly and keep names consistent across your whole file.
Updated July 11, 2026 · Reviewed by Victor Luján, Founder — certified translations since 2018
DOCUMENTS FROM EL SALVADOR
Pick Your Document
Salvadoran Birth Certificate →
Salvadoran Marriage Certificate →
Salvadoran Divorce Decree →
Salvadoran Death Certificate →
Salvadoran Diploma →
Salvadoran Academic Transcript →
Salvadoran Police Record →
Salvadoran Single Status Certificate →
GOOD TO KNOW
Issuing Authority & Authentication
Civil records in El Salvador are issued by the Registro del Estado Familiar (Family State Registry, at each municipal alcaldía), centralized nationally by the Registro Nacional de las Personas Naturales — RNPN (National Registry of Natural Persons) · official language(s): Spanish. El Salvador is a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, so civil documents are authenticated with a single apostille issued by El Salvador's Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) — no US embassy or consular legalization is required. (For records filed directly with USCIS, a certified English translation is what the agency requires; the apostille chiefly matters for courts and other authorities.)
Every document above is translated by a native specialist, reviewed by a second linguist, and delivered with a signed Certificate of Accuracy that USCIS accepts under 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3) — or we fix it free and cover your resubmission fee.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Does El Salvador use apostilles or embassy legalization for USCIS documents?
El Salvador is a Hague Apostille member, so its civil documents are authenticated with a single apostille from the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores — no US consular legalization is needed. Keep in mind that for records filed directly with USCIS the agency primarily requires a certified English translation; the apostille matters mainly for courts and other authorities. When an apostille is attached to your document, we translate it too.
My Salvadoran birth certificate is handwritten and hard to read — can you still translate it?
Yes. Many older partidas from municipal Registro del Estado Familiar books are handwritten, and our native-Spanish specialists are experienced at deciphering archaic Salvadoran script. Anything genuinely illegible is marked as such per USCIS convention rather than guessed at.
How will my two Salvadoran surnames appear in the translation?
We preserve your paternal and maternal surnames in their original order so the translation matches your passport, DUI and other USCIS records exactly. Consistent name order across every document in your file is one of the simplest ways to avoid a Request for Evidence.
Which police document does USCIS want — the solvencia or the antecedentes penales?
They are different documents: the Solvencia de la PNC is a police clearance from the National Civil Police, while the Constancia de Antecedentes Penales comes from the prisons directorate (Centros Penales). Send us whichever your attorney or the filing instructions specify and we'll translate that exact document — and we're happy to point out the difference if you're unsure.