Swiss Civil Status Document Translation (Zivilstandsregister)

How it works

1

Upload a photo or scan

Snap it with your phone or upload a scan. JPG, PNG or WebP — one page per file.

2

Pay $19.95 per page

PayPal or any card. No account needed. Price is flat — no rush fees, no hidden extras.

3

Confirm names & dates

You confirm the spelling of names and key dates — the details only you know for certain.

4

Download your certified PDF

Translation + signed certification page + copy of the original, usually in under 10 minutes.

What is on a Swiss civil status extract, field by field

Switzerland issues civil status documents as numbered extracts from the federal register (Infostar). The marriage extract is Form B; name declarations and birth entries follow the same numbered logic. The fields below are from extracts we have translated, issued by cantonal civil status offices.

Field on your document	What it is / how we handle it
1. State	“Swiss Confederation” — the issuing state, printed even on cantonal extracts.
2. Civil registry office of	The cantonal or regional office that holds the record (e.g. Baden AG, Lenzburg AG). Canton abbreviations are kept.
3. Extract from the record no.	Year / volume / entry, e.g. 2003/191/191. Transcribed exactly.
4. Date and place of the event	Written in day-month-year order — 21 11 2003 is 21 November, not 11 September. Order is preserved and the format made unambiguous.
5. / 6. Husband / Wife	On a marriage extract, the two parties are columns, not rows. The column structure is reproduced so the data stays attached to the right person.
7.–10. Names before and after the event	Name before marriage, given names, date and place of birth, and name after marriage — each numbered, each per party.
Places of origin (Heimatort)	The commune of citizenship, which in Switzerland is inherited, not where you were born. Labelled Place of Origin so it is not mistaken for a birthplace.
11. Other particulars	Marginal annotations — later divorce, death or name changes. If blank, we say so explicitly rather than leaving a gap.
12. Date of issuance	When this extract was printed — different from the date of the event.
Signature and office stamp	Signed by the civil registrar or deputy, with the office seal. Both described in brackets.
Symbol key (footer)	Jo/Mo/An = day/month/year; Sc = legal separation; Div = divorce; A = annulment; Dm/Df = death of husband/wife. Translated in full.

Swiss register terms and their English equivalents

On your document	In the certified translation
Zivilstandsregister / Registre de l’état civil	Civil Status Register
Zivilstandsamt	Civil Status Office
Auszug aus dem Eheregister (Form B)	Extract from the Marriage Record (Form B)
Namenserklärung	Name Declaration
Heimatort / Lieu d’origine	Place of Origin (commune of citizenship)
Ledigname	Name before marriage / maiden name
geb. / née	née
-/-	[no entry — field deliberately left blank]
Stellvertreter/in des Zivilstandsbeamten	Deputy Civil Registrar

What goes wrong with Swiss extracts

Day-month-year read as month-day-year — “05 05 1975” is harmless; “03 03 1973” is harmless; “21 11 2003” is not — read the American way it becomes an impossible date, and read carelessly it becomes the wrong month. The order is Swiss, and we make that explicit in the translation.
Place of origin mistaken for place of birth — A person born in Devon can have a Swiss place of origin of Endingen AG. Translating Heimatort as “birthplace” creates a contradiction with the birth certificate in the same filing.
Blank fields silently dropped — Swiss forms print every field whether or not it has content. A translation that omits the empty ones looks incomplete beside the original — so empties are shown as empty.
Three-language headers — Many extracts print headers in German, French and Italian. The document is translated once, from the language of the entries, with the multilingual headers noted.

Exactly what you'll receive

A word-for-word certified translation on company letterhead plus a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy — the package USCIS expects. Most orders are ready in as little as 35 minutes; the industry standard is 24 hours. Every order carries a public verification link an officer can check in seconds.

Sample certified translation deliverable: translation page and signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy

Sample shown with fictional data. Your document is reviewed by a human before release, and anyone can confirm authenticity at certmytranslation.com/verify.

Built for the Swiss numbered-field format

Field numbers are part of the record — Swiss extracts number every field (1. State, 2. Civil registry office, 3. Record no. …). Officers read by number, so the numbering is preserved rather than reflowed into prose.
The “-/-” convention is not a typo — A dash-slash-dash means the field is deliberately empty. It is kept as printed, with a note, rather than silently dropped.
Symbol keys translated in full — The footer key (Jo, Mo, An, Sc, Div, A, Dm, Df) defines abbreviations used in the record. It is translated so an officer can decode any annotation.
Cantonal places of origin kept — Heimatort / lieu d’origine (e.g. Endingen AG) is a Swiss legal concept with no US equivalent — kept as printed and labelled Place of Origin, not “birthplace”.

Languages we translate into English

Spanish Chinese Portuguese French Vietnamese Korean Arabic Russian Ukrainian Tagalog Hindi JapaneseGermanItalianPolishHaitian Creole*

*Low-resource languages are routed to manual review automatically. Handwritten or damaged historical documents may also be routed to a human reviewer (delivered within 24 hours) — you will see this before you pay, nothing extra.

Frequently asked questions

Is this translation accepted by USCIS?

Yes. USCIS requires a complete English translation together with a certification that the translator is competent and the translation is accurate (8 CFR 103.2(b)(3)). Every order includes that signed certification on company letterhead, with an order number that can be independently verified on our verification page. If USCIS ever rejects a translation we prepared, we revise it free of charge or refund you in full.

Do I need a notarized translation?

Not for USCIS. USCIS removed the notarization requirement decades ago — a certified translation is exactly what the instructions ask for. Some DMVs, courts and apostille processes do want notarization; if that is your situation, contact us and we will point you to a suitable notarized-translation provider.

How fast will I get my translation?

Typical orders are delivered in under 10 minutes. Handwritten, damaged or low-resolution documents are routed to manual review and delivered within 24 hours — you'll see the status on your order page.

What does it cost?

$19.95 per page, flat. No subscriptions, no accounts, no upsells. You pay with PayPal or card and download a finished PDF: translation, signed certification page, and a copy of your original.

Is my document safe?

Files are encrypted in transit, are never used to train AI models, and are automatically deleted from our servers 30 days after delivery. You can request earlier deletion at any time.

What if something in my document is unreadable?

Industry practice (and USCIS expectation) is to mark unreadable text as [Illegible] rather than guess. Our multi-step verification compares two independent AI readings plus your own confirmation of names and dates, so nothing is silently invented.

My extract is trilingual — do you charge three times?

No. It is one document and one page. The multilingual headers are part of the Swiss form, not three separate texts.

Do you handle name declarations as well as marriage extracts?

Yes — name declarations, marriage extracts, birth entries and other Infostar extracts all use the same numbered format and are handled the same way.

Swiss Civil Status Document Translation