In-Person Citizenship Interview: Should I Translate Old Passports from Before the 5-Year Eligibility Period?

[MaHab]

Hi everyone,

I received an in-person interview notice 5 days ago, along with a request to email colour copies of all pages of all passports valid within my 5-year eligibility period, including blank pages. I submitted those yesterday, along with the applicable translation.

The interview notice says I must bring all original passports and travel documents in my possession, including current and expired ones. It also says that any documents/stamps not in English or French must be translated.

My question is: does this translation requirement apply only to passports valid within the 5-year eligibility period, or does it also apply to older passports that I still have but that were valid before the eligibility period?

For example, if I have two old passports from before the 5-year period with non-English/French stamps, do I need to translate those as well simply because I’m bringing the original passports to the interview?

I would really appreciate hearing from anyone who had a similar in-person citizenship interview experience.

 

[caninfoseeker]

No personal experience but if the translation on two old pp is easy and affordable get it done, because language is ambiguous, you can't afford to fail interview.

 

[armoured]

Hi everyone,

I received an in-person interview notice 5 days ago, along with a request to email colour copies of all pages of all passports valid within my 5-year eligibility period, including blank pages. I submitted those yesterday, along with the applicable translation.

The interview notice says I must bring all original passports and travel documents in my possession, including current and expired ones. It also says that any documents/stamps not in English or French must be translated.

My question is: does this translation requirement apply only to passports valid within the 5-year eligibility period, or does it also apply to older passports that I still have but that were valid before the eligibility period?

For example, if I have two old passports from before the 5-year period with non-English/French stamps, do I need to translate those as well simply because I’m bringing the original passports to the interview?

I would really appreciate hearing from anyone who had a similar in-person citizenship interview experience.

We did not have an in-person interview but did provide copies of all passports with stamps for an online interview. We did not do translations of stamps.

Now important note: we did not have ANY visas with extended details that were not in English or French. It was just stamps. the vast, vast majority of these were EU-style stamps that have no writing apart from the name of the airport, perhaps country/two-letter country code (usually in latin alphabet, some cyrillic). There were a few stamps that had some Arabic but were clear what country/airport, and the only info apart from dates were the formatted Arabic (eg around edges of the stamp, that I assume says something like "border authority of [country]", and clearly part of the entry/exit stamp rather than other info). There may have been a stamp or three in Spanish or Portuguese - but again, very limited.

There were no full-page insert visas with info like work/study/permanent residence-type details that might be of relevance or be considered important; I actually think these ones may be cases where translation is critical, but that's only a somewhat-educated guess.

We did not have any issue, it never came up.

Very important caveat: YMMV. If they decide you need the translations, it's your problem. The best, safest way is to get the translations. We took a calculated risk based on some experience and knowing the stamps were basically all entry/exit info. There certainly have been cases here where people have been required to get translations (I can't recall if any were for these interviews for citizenship, though), and I don't have info on whether the content of the stamps/passport info for those where applicants were required to get translations was the difference.

 

[Seym]

No personal experience but if the translation on two old pp is easy and affordable get it done, because language is ambiguous, you can't afford to fail interview.

There is no "failing" here.
If IRCC asks for something during the interview and OP can't provide it, they'll be able to do so via webform at a later date.

As @armoured said, YMMV. But, speaking of experience : the agent barely looked at my current passport during my own interview , and didn't care about old ones. Yeah, in theory, you need to translate everything including the stomps of the passport you may have had as a baby, but in practice, these old passports and their content is irrelevant to IRCC (it's not even needed for the citizenship application), and don't help assess physical presence. There's a 99% chance you don't need these translations. The 1% left would be a 0.9 for being "unlucky", and 0.1 of odd situations in which IRCC would like to know about some suspicious situation like traveling 7 times to North Korea 12 years ago...
The North Korea joke put aside, feel free to exercise uber caution and translate everything, but if I was in your shoes, I just won't, and provide those in the rare case they ask for it later. Odds are, you'll just save the money by not doing it beforehand.

 

[armoured]

But, speaking of experience : the agent barely looked at my current passport during my own interview , and didn't care about old ones.

This was our experience as well. Of course we can't know if the officer actually spent time looking at stuff before, but I did not get that impression.

And in our case there was a certain importance about a few of the stamps - because CBSA info missed one exit and two of the stamps showed when the exit (or rather entry to destination) happened. In the end it seemed more like the officer wanted to confirm the applicant actually did reside in Canada habitually (lots of travel) and then that was it.

Reiterate of course, YMMV.