Recently, SLD member Yuliia Vereta generously shared her glossary of U.S. immigration and legal terms with SLD. The glossary is now available in the Glossaries section on the resources page. In this post, Yuliia shares some of her motivations, considerations, and process for creating this valuable resource.
Origins
This glossary grew out of a practical need. As I took on more work in English-language legal and immigration translation, I noticed a consistent gap: there was no reliable, consolidated reference for the specific terminology that comes up when translating U.S. immigration and legal documents into Ukrainian, Russian, and Polish. Some non-profits and advocacy groups do publish glossaries online, but I haven’t found them particularly useful for my purposes. Most contain only around 100 common terms, and the translations are not always sufficiently precise or suitable for professional use.
American immigration law is, by most accounts, among the most complex legal systems in the world. The sheer volume of forms, procedures, agency acronyms, and status categories exceeds what most developed countries have in comparable areas (and will ever have). So I started building it for myself. Over time, it became something I thought others could use too.
The original idea of creating such a glossary (initially for my own learning purposes ) came to me after I had used the excellent Glossary of Basic Terms in the Field of Social Security published by the Polish Social Insurance Institution (ZUS), which covered Polish, English, German, and Russian. It was a real game-changer for me. That’s when I realized that I wanted to find more resources of this kind or, if I couldn’t find them, create them myself.
I should add that this glossary is not meant to be exhaustive — U.S. immigration law is an enormous field, and there are many terms still missing. I see it rather as a starting point.
Sources and references
The USCIS website, with its glossary and A-Z index, was a constant reference for anything touching forms and status categories. I used these tools to research English terms and their meanings, and to understand how the terms are used in the context of the U.S. immigration system.
When it comes to choosing the right word, my everyday professional experience plays a much bigger role than dictionaries. I work with Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian court and immigration documents on a daily basis, so I am familiar with the terminology actually used in these legal and administrative systems. When choosing an equivalent, I usually rely on what I have encountered in documents and in my translation practice.
Dictionaries and online resources are helpful when dealing with concepts that do not have a direct counterpart in the Polish, Ukrainian, or Russian immigration systems. In such cases, I use them to explore possible renderings and compare all the options to choose the right one.
For terminology research across all three target languages, Multitran proved invaluable — it remains one of the best resources available for Slavic legal and technical vocabulary, particularly where standard bilingual dictionaries fall short. However, Multitran’s Russian section is considerably more extensive than the Ukrainian and Polish sections, whose coverage is less consistent. I still consider it the best online resource for English–Ukrainian and English–Polish translation.
Choosing and pruning terms
My initial list of potential terms was about five times larger than what eventually made it in. I started with a much broader collection of U.S. legal and immigration terms that I thought might be useful to me in the first place, but also other translators working with English, Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian.
As I worked through them, however, I realized that finding a suitable equivalent in all three languages was not always possible. Some terms had several possible translations but no clearly established equivalent; others referred to concepts specific to the U.S. legal system. I decided to remove a number of them rather than include translations I wasn’t fully confident about or resort to descriptive renderings, which I generally prefer to avoid.
This is also why I described the glossary as a limited resource rather than an ultimate or comprehensive glossary. In fact, it is nowhere near comprehensive. It is a selection of terms for which I was able to find equivalents I considered sufficiently reliable.
Transliteration vs. equivalents: the case of affidavit
One of the more interesting decisions in putting this glossary together was choosing when to transliterate a term and when to reach for a native-language equivalent.
Affidavit is a good example. I render it as аффидевит / афідевіт rather than offering a descriptive paraphrase. This is deliberate — and it reflects something I have observed lately directly in my practice. From my experience, many people in Ukraine and Russia — particularly those who remain in their home country while their families have relocated abroad — rely on affidavits for cross-border legal matters (e.g. to authorize a child to travel abroad with the other parent, or to allow a spouse to purchase property in another country, to prove their civil status etc.). Ukrainian and Russian notaries preparing these documents for international use already call them аффидевит / афідевіт, because that is the term the receiving country will recognize. The transliterated word has entered everyday legal practice.
I should note that this is a relatively recent development. Under older procedures, descriptive native-language equivalents were more commonly used. However, as cross-border legal activity has increased — particularly following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — the transliterated term has become standard.
Who the glossary is for
When I decided to share my glossary, I had two groups in mind. First, the translators who are newer to this language combination and this area of law, who may not yet have built up their own working reference materials. I also included a Notes column in the glossary, which can serve a dual purpose: it holds usage notes and caveats for the translator, but it can equally serve as a space for an additional language — useful for anyone working with a language pair not covered by the three target languages I included.
The other group is the immigrants and newcomers themselves. People navigating U.S. immigration processes often encounter documents, notices, and forms in English long before they have access to professional assistance. I wanted this to be a free resource available for downloading for anyone — something a person can use to orient themselves before they ever sit down with a professional. This matters especially for those arriving under difficult circumstances, such as displacement due to military conflict, where every available resource counts and professional legal help, while eventually necessary, may not be the first thing a family can afford. If this glossary helps someone understand what they will be asked to sign, or what a notice actually means, before their first appointment with an attorney — that is exactly what it is for.
Yuliia Vereta, CT, is an ATA-certified English-to-Russian translator and a sworn Ukrainian-language translator and interpreter certified by the Ministry of Justice of Poland, where she regularly works as a court interpreter. She has an MA in translation studies and has specialized for over a decade in legal, academic, and literary translation across English, Ukrainian, Polish, and Russian. She has worked with courts, law firms, public institutions, and international clients across Europe and the United States. Alongside her translation career, she writes speculative poetry published mainly in the U.S. She is particularly interested in the intersection of language, identity, and culture and how these forces shape meaning across shifting linguistic and cultural borders.