Documents & translations confusion

[MichalKr]

Hi all,

I want to ask you for help with clarifying the confusion about the documents and translations required for our application.

I went over many posts in this forum, Quora, and Reddit it makes my head spin. I found a lot of valuable information that I'm more than helpful for. However, there are still some parts I'm confused about.

Our situation

• I'm the principal applicant, applying under the Family class
• My common-law partner is the Sponsor, she is a Canadian citizenship
• We have lived in a common-law partnership for 6 years
• We have 2 children, both of them Canadian citizens
• We live outside of Canada (EU) and we want to move permanently to Canada (ON)

Questions about documents
The documents required to prove our common-law partnership and the

1. Proof of joint utility accounts: How much back do they need to go? Is a year enough? Also, is the exported bank account statement from the internet banking enough or does it need to be provided by the bank directly?
2. Documentary evidence of financial support between you and your sponsor: We have 120+ pages of transactions from the joint account and our own bank accounts. How much back do they need to go? Is the exported bank account statement from Internet banking enough? Can we provide screenshots of transactions between our accounts in Internet banking? (The IB doesn't support a PDF export of selected payments, only full statements).
3. If you are not working in Canada, provide other documentation that you can support the person(s) you are sponsoring: This one is defined very vaguely and yet it sounds very important. How extensive must be the explanation? Could somebody who has experience with similar applications provide more details?
   Also, what kind of documents and how far back should we submit? We want to provide savings account statements, but again, these are generated in Internet banking as PDFs. Is that enough?

Questions about translations

1. What needs to be REALLY translated? We have a Rental agreement that consists of 10 pages on legal rules. From my perspective, only the 1st page with our names, addresses and information, and the last page with all the signatures matter. Do we need to translate it all? Is it fine to translate just 1st and last page and leave the rest untranslated? And what about the account statements? We have 120+ pages of the bank account statements from our shared account and our own accounts. How much might they be interested in?
2. Do all the documents need to be translated legally/certified, or only the most important ones?
3. I read a few times over that the documents like Bank account statements were translated by the applicants themselves. Is that really a possibility?
4. Payment slips: does every part need to be translated? They contain a lot of abbreviations and local financial jargon.

Any help with any of these questions will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Michal

 

[Kananaskis]

I'll leave your questions to someone who is more knowledgeable like @scylla or @armoured


Translations: I'll copy what IRCC sent me at the bottom. But to make things shorter for you, everything that isn't in English or in French HAS to be translated by an authorized translator. I'm not sure in which country of the EU you are, but Canada isn't part of the Apostille Convention Treaty, so you need to get it Authenticated, and not Apostilled (Although if you do get it Apostilled it's not an issue. You don't need that type of service though). Do NOT translate anything yourself, it will not be accepted.

As per IRCC email:

Any document that is not in English or French must be accompanied by the English or French translation completed by a certified translator, affidavit from the translator, and a copy of the original document. If any of the requested document(s) are not available, please submit a detailed written explanation.

 

[armoured]

Translations: I'll copy what IRCC sent me at the bottom. But to make things shorter for you, everything that isn't in English or in French HAS to be translated by an authorized translator. I'm not sure in which country of the EU you are, but Canada isn't part of the Apostille Convention Treaty, so you need to get it Authenticated

NO. Very much no. This is wrong. "Authentication" is a different and specific thing - and in fact the process for getting something 'apostilled' is what is meant by authentication (in more normal human language, or also 'certification' that it's an official document.

Don't add terminology. 'Authentication' is a distinct thing which IRCC will ask for if they need it. (Note: there are some, few, countries, mostly in Latin America (as far as I'm aware) where authentication is required - IRCC will specify if that's so and for which documents)

As per IRCC email:

Any document that is not in English or French must be accompanied by the English or French translation completed by a certified translator, affidavit from the translator, and a copy of the original document. If any of the requested document(s) are not available, please submit a detailed written explanation.

This is basically correct. In most cases, someone will need to certify that the copy of the original document is a true and blah blah blah copy. Usually that someone is a notary or equivalent.

Important to note here that PROFESSIONAL translators (i.e. certified translators) are almost always perfectly aware what is required by foreign embassies and they can arrange that. (Likewise most lawyers and notaries also know how to provide a proper translation into a foreign language and will arrange for professional, certified translators to do it if needed.

In my experience: this is a perfectly normal thing in almost or every country of the EU because, thanks to Napoleon, it's broadly the same civil law everywhere, and any gaps that were left the EU has mostly taken care of. (or if you prefer the warsaw pact actually did some stnadardization of sorts here too)

 

[armoured]

Our situation

• I'm the principal applicant, applying under the Family class
• My common-law partner is the Sponsor, she is a Canadian citizenship
• We have lived in a common-law partnership for 6 years
• We have 2 children, both of them Canadian citizens
• We live outside of Canada (EU) and we want to move permanently to Canada (ON)

Read through the application carefully and pay attention. Note, you will have to use judgment about what is necessary, i.e. how much documentation to provide.

Important: in your situation, you shouldn't need to provide much. You've been living together for years and have two kids. They're NOT going to dispute that you are common law. This means you can submit, basically, somewhat more thin pack of proof.

Use common sense.

Questions about documents
The documents required to prove our common-law partnership and the

1. Proof of joint utility accounts: How much back do they need to go? Is a year enough? Also, is the exported bank account statement from the internet banking enough or does it need to be provided by the bank directly?
2. Documentary evidence of financial support between you and your sponsor: We have 120+ pages of transactions from the joint account and our own bank accounts. How much back do they need to go? Is the exported bank account statement from Internet banking enough? Can we provide screenshots of transactions between our accounts in Internet banking? (The IB doesn't support a PDF export of selected payments, only full statements).
3. If you are not working in Canada, provide other documentation that you can support the person(s) you are sponsoring: This one is defined very vaguely and yet it sounds very important. How extensive must be the explanation? Could somebody who has experience with similar applications provide more details?
   Also, what kind of documents and how far back should we submit? We want to provide savings account statements, but again, these are generated in Internet banking as PDFs. Is that enough?

Show you live together (lease or ownership docs). Provide evidence (a couple transactions_) about who pays for the housing expenses. Provide a couple other documentary things - for who pays for kids' expenses, for example. That will probably be enough. Look at what IRCC requests (a couple of examples) and provide that and not much more. Maybe evidence of joint bank accounts or insurance beneficiaries.

Questions about translations

1. What needs to be REALLY translated? We have a Rental agreement that consists of 10 pages on legal rules. From my perspective, only the 1st page with our names, addresses and information, and the last page with all the signatures matter. Do we need to translate it all? Is it fine to translate just 1st and last page and leave the rest untranslated? And what about the account statements? We have 120+ pages of the bank account statements from our shared account and our own accounts. How much might they be interested in?
2. Do all the documents need to be translated legally/certified, or only the most important ones?
3. I read a few times over that the documents like Bank account statements were translated by the applicants themselves. Is that really a possibility?
4. Payment slips: does every part need to be translated? They contain a lot of abbreviations and local financial jargon.

Any help with any of these questions will be greatly appreciated.

Again, use some judgment. For most apps, you need to translate everything. In your case, you MIGHT be able to get away with translating short versions of things (like rental agreement). Again, target providing less and shorter documents BECAUSE in your case, you are not going to face a lot of doubt if you ahve two kids and have been residing together for 5_ years. You'll have to decide.

Now one thing: partly this will depend on language. Honestly, IRCC people - including support staff - are going to be able to figure out content of docs in major European languages and and their close language relatives when the office deals with a lot of those files. (Eg knowledge of spanish is widespread and probably figure out italian, maybe romanian in a pinch. For the related slavic languages - to some degree. Estonian - forget about it.). And note, esp for docs where the content is such that really one only needs to know the title of the doc to get the substance of what's going on. They are NOT going to accept complex legal docs about custody of children; a copy of a bank balance titled 'savings account' - much easier to grasp.

For example: our file was also 'easy' in many respects, and I didn't translate some things that were mostly about numbers/presence of docs (like a bank doc or two) and/or were MORE than IRCC required. (These were docs in Russian and I know the Warsaw office which handles files have a fair number of staff who understand/read Russian). Similarly I provided a summary page that the standard rental agreement contained and left out the 12+ pages. Etc.

In other words, probalby possible to cut corners a bit IF you have provided the basic documents properly translated and the stuff that's 'extra' is clear. Use some judgment.

BUT: this is NOT recommended and repeat, I only did this for things that were probably a bit more than required. If it causes you problems, it's not my problem.

And again very important: I used my judgment that our 7+ year relationship / kid / etc was going to be sufficient.

 

[Kananaskis]

NO. Very much no. This is wrong. "Authentication" is a different and specific thing - and in fact the process for getting something 'apostilled' is what is meant by authentication (in more normal human language, or also 'certification' that it's an official document.

Don't add terminology. 'Authentication' is a distinct thing which IRCC will ask for if they need it. (Note: there are some, few, countries, mostly in Latin America (as far as I'm aware) where authentication is required - IRCC will specify if that's so and for which documents)



This is basically correct. In most cases, someone will need to certify that the copy of the original document is a true and blah blah blah copy. Usually that someone is a notary or equivalent.

Important to note here that PROFESSIONAL translators (i.e. certified translators) are almost always perfectly aware what is required by foreign embassies and they can arrange that. (Likewise most lawyers and notaries also know how to provide a proper translation into a foreign language and will arrange for professional, certified translators to do it if needed.

In my experience: this is a perfectly normal thing in almost or every country of the EU because, thanks to Napoleon, it's broadly the same civil law everywhere, and any gaps that were left the EU has mostly taken care of. (or if you prefer the warsaw pact actually did some stnadardization of sorts here too)

You didn't understand me or maybe I didn't explain it clearly, many countries in the EU and some in Latin America do need to get documents "apostilled" in order for them to be considered valid in the first place for some procedures.
A lot of people from these countries that need visas and etc are used to getting it translated and apostilled, usually the service is offered by the same translation company.
Since Canada is not part of that treaty, its not mandatory to get things like birth certificate or police certificate apostilled.
By authentication, I mean some sort authentication for of his government that they do, aside from apostille, which is usually less time consuming and less expensive,in order to consider the document a valid one. In my case, they call it a "certified" document, or sometimes referred to "authenticated" document, which is usually enough to satisfy countries that do not require the document to have an apostille.

 

[armoured]

You didn't understand me or maybe I didn't explain it clearly, many countries in the EU and some in Latin America do need to get documents "apostilled" in order for them to be considered valid in the first place for some procedures.
A lot of people from these countries that need visas and etc are used to getting it translated and apostilled, usually the service is offered by the same translation company.
Since Canada is not part of that treaty, its not mandatory to get things like birth certificate or police certificate apostilled.
By authentication, I mean some sort authentication for of his government that they do, aside from apostille, which is usually less time consuming and less expensive,in order to consider the document a valid one. In my case, they call it a "certified" document, or sometimes referred to "authenticated" document, which is usually enough to satisfy countries that do not require the document to have an apostille.

I probably didn't understand what you wrote.

Apostille process according to the Hague convention is a specific type of authentication of an official document confirming - either by the government itself or acc to some government-controlled procedure - that the document is authentic. The Hague convention 'apostille' is specific in that by the convention, countries recognize each others' authentication procedures.

That's why I say that Canada typically does NOT require authentication. When IRCC does require this (as in some Latin American countries), it specifies such.

If there is some other authentication process you are referring to that is also called authentication, but which is different from the Hague process, okay. But an apostille is a type of authentication. Again - Canada almost always recognizes the procedure I described above - translation, certified copy. I would guess that many people informally refer to eg notaries' certification as authentication - which I think is wrong but also just a question of definition and terminology.

Likewise, people will say apostille for different things. Overall I agree with you: "A lot of people from these countries that need visas and etc are used to getting it translated and apostilled, usually the service is offered by the same translation company." As I noted above, check what's done locally: it will probably be accepted, if you ask translators how to get 'legal' translations and copies, or if you ask lawyers how to get proper translations.

[Note: apparently Canada recently joined in some form the Hague convention. I presume at minimum this means Canada will recognize Hague-convention apostilles, as I think signatories are required to. I think the main reason for Canada joining is so that other countries will recognize Canadian authenticated documents - because we've never been too picky about their documents, and that Canada used to refuse to do the hague convention thing because federalism means federal government doesn't control the provinces' documents, but it's been a pain for Canadians. (And I guess they found some compromise with the provinces, which in truth existed before in the sense that Global Affairs could 'authenticate' documents but was ... clunky)

Anyway: to boil it down. Canada doesn't require apostilles or other 'authentication' unless otherwise specified. If not specified, see above: certified translation, attach copy, notarisation that the copy is true. Local rules/procedures for foreign embassies/use abroad are usually well known.