Certified Vietnamese Police Check Translation

💡 TL;DR: If you are applying for a US, Canadian or Australian visa, you will almost certainly need a certified Vietnamese police check translation. The document these authorities want is the Certificate of Judicial Record No. 2 (Phieu ly lich tu phap so 2), the version that shows your full record. The No. 1 certificate is not accepted by USCIS, IRCC or the Australian Department of Home Affairs. Once you hold the original, the English version must be a complete, faithful mirror delivered with a signed certificate of accuracy. For the United States no notary is required. Getting the right certificate and a clean certified translation the first time is what keeps a case off the slow path of a Request for Evidence.

Why the police check sits on almost every immigration checklist

After the birth certificate, the police check is the civil document immigration officers ask for most often. The reason is simple: a visa is partly a character decision, and the certified Vietnamese police check translation is how an officer confirms whether you have a criminal record in Vietnam. Most programs ask every applicant aged sixteen or older to provide one for each country where they have lived six months or more, so for a Vietnamese applicant the home-country certificate is rarely optional.

You will see it requested in a US immigrant visa file at the consulate, in a Canadian permanent residence or citizenship application, and in an Australian skilled or partner visa. It usually travels in the same envelope as the documents I cover in my guide to certified birth certificate translation, which is why getting the whole civil-document set translated consistently, with names spelled the same way everywhere, saves a lot of back and forth later.

Vietnam's police check explained: No. 1 versus No. 2

The Vietnamese police check is officially the Phieu ly lich tu phap, the Judicial Record Card. It is not issued by the police at all: it comes from the provincial Department of Justice (So Tu phap) where you are registered, or from the National Centre for Judicial Records (Trung tam Ly lich tu phap quoc gia) under the Ministry of Justice if you have already left the country. Since 1 July 2024 it is printed on plain white A4 paper with the issuing authority's signature and stamp; older certificates used a light-blue security foil.

There are two versions, and the difference decides whether your visa file is accepted. No. 1 shows only convictions that have not been expunged, so once a sentence is spent it can read as a clean record, and a third party may apply for it on your behalf. No. 2 shows your complete history, including convictions that have been expunged or pardoned, and you must apply for it in person yourself. Immigration authorities want the full picture, so they ask for No. 2.

Feature	No. 1 (so 1)	No. 2 (so 2)
What it shows	Only convictions not yet expunged	The full record, including expunged or pardoned convictions
Who can apply	You, or an authorised agent	You only, in person or online, no agent
Typical use	Jobs, work permits, UK and some EU and China files	US, Canada and Australia immigration
Issuing office	Provincial Department of Justice (So Tu phap) or the National Centre for Judicial Records

The practical takeaway: before you pay for any translation, make sure you actually hold No. 2. I have seen applicants translate a pristine No. 1, only to be told at the interview that it is the wrong certificate.

Which certificate each authority wants: United States, Australia, Canada

The core requirement is shared, a faithful translation with a signed accuracy statement, but each authority wraps it differently. The table below sorts out what each one asks for.

Authority	Certificate	Translation	Notes
United States (USCIS, consulate)	No. 2	Certified English translation, no notary	Hard copy with a wet stamp and seal, digital copies are not accepted
Australia (Home Affairs)	No. 2	Accredited (NAATI) translation for use in Australia	Treated as valid for 12 months from the issue date
Canada (IRCC)	No. 2 (Judicial Certificate #2)	Certified translation into English or French	A colour scan of the original is required, certified copies are not

For the United States the rule is the same one that governs every foreign document at the consulate: a certified English translation, with no notary. Canada is similar, except a translator who is not a certified member of a Canadian provincial body must add an affidavit, which I cover in my guide to certified Vietnamese translation for IRCC. You can confirm the US position on the State Department's Vietnam reciprocity page and the Canadian one on the official IRCC police-certificate page for Vietnam.

What "certified translation" means here, and where a notary fits

In the US and Canadian systems, certified does not mean stamped by a court. It means the translation arrives with a signed statement in which the translator confirms that the translation is complete and accurate and that they are competent to translate from Vietnamese into English. The statement carries the translator's full name, signature, date and contact details. That is the entire legal test for USCIS, and I walk through it in detail in my guide to USCIS certified translation rules.

Three things get confused, so it helps to keep them apart. Certification is the translator's signed accuracy statement. Notarization only verifies the identity of the person who signs that statement and says nothing about translation quality, and USCIS has not required it since 2011. Vietnamese cong chung is a separate domestic step, done by a Vietnamese notary office, that authenticates a document or signature inside Vietnam. I am the translator who certifies accuracy. If your receiving office also asks for notarization or cong chung, that step is handled separately by a notary, not by me.

What must appear on a faithful police-check translation

A police check is short, but every line carries weight, so the translation has to be a true mirror rather than a summary. This is exactly the kind of document I translate and certify for USCIS and IRCC, and these are the elements I reproduce on every one.

• The full heading, including the Socialist Republic of Vietnam line and the issuing Department of Justice.
• Your identity block, with your full name carrying its Vietnamese diacritics exactly as on your passport, date of birth, and identity or passport number.
• The record line itself, the single most important sentence. Khong co an tich means no criminal record, while a listed conviction must be rendered precisely, never softened or omitted.
• The certificate number and the No. 2 designation, so the officer can see at a glance it is the correct version.
• Seals, stamps and the signing official, reproduced as bracketed notes, for example [Round seal of the Department of Justice], with the Director's or Vice Director's title and the issue date.

The most common rejection reasons, and how I prevent them

After years of civil-document work, the pattern is clear: police checks rarely fail on hard language, they fail on small mismatches an officer can spot in seconds. These are the ones I watch for on every file.

• The wrong certificate. A translated No. 1 is the classic mistake. I flag it before translating if the document is not No. 2.
• Names without diacritics. If the translation drops the marks that distinguish your name, it stops matching your passport. I keep the Vietnamese spelling intact and mirror the passport transliteration.
• A mistranslated record line. The no criminal record sentence has to be unambiguous in English. A vague rendering invites questions.
• Untranslated seals. An officer needs to see what every stamp says, so each seal is described, not left blank.
• An expired certificate. Australia treats the certificate as valid for 12 months, and the US and Canada expect a recent one, so timing matters as much as wording.

Cost, turnaround and what you receive

Two costs are involved, and people often confuse them. First the Vietnamese government fee to obtain the certificate itself, then the translation. The table gives indicative figures.

Item	Indicative
Government fee for the No. 2 certificate	200,000 VND per applicant (about 8 USD)
Processing time at the Department of Justice	About 10 to 15 working days
Certified translation	About 25–60 USD per page
Translation turnaround	1 to 3 business days, a No. 2 is usually 1 to 2 pages

What you receive from me is a clean PDF of the English translation that mirrors the original layout, plus a signed statement of accuracy with my name, signature and contact details, ready for USCIS, IRCC or the Department of Home Affairs. If your office also needs notarization or Vietnamese cong chung, that is arranged separately with a notary. This is the same certified Vietnamese translation standard I apply to every immigration document, so your police check, birth certificate and diploma all read as one consistent set.

FAQ

Source: U.S. Department of State, Vietnam Reciprocity Schedule and IRCC, How to get a police certificate (Vietnam).

About the author

I am Dao Huy (Lucas), a professional translator working across English, Vietnamese, Chinese and French, with more than seven years in medical, legal, financial and academic translation. Civil documents like the police check are everyday work for me: short pages where one mistranslated line or a dropped diacritic can stall an immigration file for months, which is why I treat every seal and every name with the same care as a contract.

If you need a certified Vietnamese translation of your police check or any civil document, I offer English to Vietnamese translation, certified document translation and multilingual localization, and I am happy to translate your whole immigration set as one consistent package. You can see the service and request a quote at daohuy.com.