When 'Łódzkie' on a Polish Birth Certificate Means the Voivodeship

Polish voivodeships are named with the neuter-adjective form — Łódzkie, Mazowieckie, Pomorskie, Wielkopolskie — and the official Polish state itself uses that form in its English-language materials. Łódź is a city <em>within</em> the Łódzkie Voivodeship; the two are different administrative units at different scales. A translator unfamiliar with this convention may try to 'normalize' the adjective 'łódzkie' to a recognizable place name and render the field as 'Łódź'. The English side of the certificate then says the child was registered in the city of Łódź — collapsing a 2.4-million-resident voivodeship to a city of 670,000 and contradicting every other field that names Tomaszów Mazowiecki (a different city, 50 km away).

The second stamp adds a parallel pitfall. 'Tomaszowie Mazowieckim' is the locative case of 'Tomaszów Mazowiecki' — the form Polish grammar requires after the preposition <em>w</em> (in), and the form the registry office stamps onto its own forms so the sentence on the document reads naturally in Polish. English place names do not decline. A translation that copies the inflected form directly produces a city name that does not exist; a US adjudicator searching for 'Tomaszowie Mazowieckim' will find nothing.

USCIS expects a <a href="/guides/what-is-a-certified-translation">complete and accurate certified translation</a> in which every place name on the English side can be cross-referenced against the client's other filings (passport, prior approvals, supporting documents). A wrong administrative level or a non-existent city name on a birth certificate is exactly the kind of mismatch that triggers a Request for Evidence.