The Shenasnameh (شناسنامه) is not a birth certificate in the U.S. sense. It’s a small green booklet issued by Iran’s National Organization for Civil Registration (Sazman-e Sabt-e Ahval) at birth and amended over a lifetime. By the time the booklet is presented for a U.S. filing, it usually carries marriage, divorce, and child-birth annotations stamped into its margins — and a translator who treats it like a one-page certificate will miss material facts.
Anatomy of the booklet
A modern Shenasnameh has six relevant pages. Each must appear in the translation, in order, even if a page is blank — annotated as [no entries] so the officer knows nothing was missed.
- Cover page with the national ID number (Kod-e Melli) and serial number.
- Page 1: bearer’s personal information — given name, surname, father’s name, mother’s name, date and place of birth, registration number, and date of issue.
- Page 2: spouse information, with date of marriage and divorce stamps.
- Page 3: children’s information, one row per child with name and date of birth.
- Page 4: notes and corrections (e.g., name changes, religion changes).
- Final page: a stamp confirming the bearer is alive, or a death stamp if applicable.
Persian-calendar dates
Every date in the booklet is recorded in the Persian (Solar Hijri / Jalali) calendar — for example, 5 Esfand 1372. To convert, add the Gregorian equivalent in brackets in the translation: 5 Esfand 1372 [24 February 1994]. The Persian year begins on the spring equinox, so any date between 1 Farvardin and 11 Dey lands a year ahead of the cross-year Gregorian equivalent.
Names and transliteration
Iranian names commonly include the father’s given name as a middle component. The translator must transliterate consistently with the bearer’s passport. If the passport renders Mohammadali as one word but the booklet renders Mohammad Ali as two, note the discrepancy as a translator’s note rather than silently aligning — that creates an audit trail.
Marginal stamps and annotations
The four annotation types that most often appear in the booklet’s margins:
- Marriage stamp (مهر ازدواج) — names the spouse, date of marriage, and registration office. Always on page 2.
- Divorce stamp (مهر طلاق) — names the spouse and date; sometimes notes whether the divorce was bayn or rij’i (irrevocable / revocable). Translate both terms; do not summarize.
- Child birth annotation — typically a stamp on page 3 listing the child’s name and date of birth.
- Death stamp (مهر فوت) — on the final page if the bearer is deceased. The booklet is then surrendered to the civil registry.
Religion field
The booklet records the bearer’s religion. For asylum cases where the underlying claim involves religious persecution, this field is often material to the filing. Translate the term exactly as recorded — Eslam (Islam), Masihi (Christian), Zardoshti (Zoroastrian), or Kalimi (Jewish) — and do not omit the field even if it appears blank or has been amended.
Issuing-office stamps
Every page carries an embossed and inked stamp from the issuing civil registry. The translation should include the office name, the city, and the date of issue. If a stamp is partly illegible, label the unreadable region with [illegible stamp] rather than guessing.
How Verdacert handles the booklet
Our AI extraction pipeline first segments the booklet by page, then runs language-model translation primed with a Shenasnameh-specific vocabulary list (national ID, civil registry, marriage stamp). A credentialed Farsi reviewer reads the source side-by-side with the AI output, fixes calendar conversions, verifies stamps, and signs the certification. The reviewer’s notes — alternate name spellings, illegible regions, calendar conversions — are placed on a dedicated translator’s-notes page at the end so the officer can find them in one place.
Filing checklist
- All six pages translated, in order, with blank pages annotated [no entries].
- Cover page Kod-e Melli and serial number reproduced on the first translation page.
- Every Persian date followed by the Gregorian equivalent in brackets.
- Marginal stamps translated in place — not summarized into a single paragraph.
- Name spelling matches the passport biographical page.
- Certification statement is signed and dated by the translator, with the source language identified as Farsi (Persian).