Simple answers to your birth certificate translation questions.
This is the question we get asked more than any other, and plenty of people buy the wrong one.
Ask yourself one thing: where is the certificate going?
If it is going to a UK office — the Home Office, UKVI, HM Passport Office, a register office, a council or a school — you need a certified birth certificate translation. None of them ask for a notary.
If it is going out of the country, then you need the notary step as well.
Send us the certificate and tell us who asked for it. We will tell you which one, free, before you buy anything.
A certified birth certificate translation means we translate your certificate and sign to say the translation is true and correct.
A notarised birth certificate translation means a notary public then checks our signature and adds their own stamp on top.
Here is the part that surprises people. The notary does not read your language and does not check the translation itself. They check who signed the page. Offices abroad trust that stamp because a notary is a legal officer here in the UK.
No, it is a third thing.
Legalisation, or an apostille, is a government stamp for papers going abroad. We do not add it ourselves.
The government only stamps a signature it already knows, and a notary's signature is one of those. An ordinary translator's is not.
So for a birth certificate leaving the UK the order runs: translate, then notarise, then apostille.
No. A certified birth certificate translation is all they want.
We say this plainly because a lot of people tick the notary box on a visa or passport order without needing it. It costs more, it takes longer, and the caseworker treats it exactly the same.
Our birth certificate translation for UK visa and Home Office pages explain what UKVI actually checks. If somebody has told you otherwise, ask them to put it in writing and send it to us.
It depends what the apostille is on.
If it is stamped on your original certificate, that is normal. You still need the translation, and the notary on top of it only if a foreign office asked for one.
If you were hoping the apostille covers the translation too, it does not. For that, the notary has to come first.
One customer got the apostille before anything else and had to pay for the whole thing twice. Tell us the full picture at the start and we will put it in the right order.
UK offices look for five things, and they look for all five:
Every birth certificate translation we issue has all five on it before it reaches you. You do not have to ask, and there is no extra charge.
The whole thing. A summary is not accepted anywhere.
One customer wrote to us saying their guidance told them it must be a full certified translation and not a summary. That is exactly right.
We translate every word on the certificate — the boxes, the stamps, the seals, the notes written up the side, the handwriting, and anything printed on the back.
Yes, on every page.
A missing date is one of the three most common reasons a birth certificate translation gets sent back. The other two are no translator details, and a name spelt differently from the passport.
Yes. We are an ATC accredited company and our translators are members of the ITI or the CIOL.
This comes up a lot. One customer told us their German office had set only one condition for the birth certificate translation — it had to be done by someone registered with CIOL or ITI, and nothing else mattered.
Ask us and we will give you the registration number.
Yes, along with our UK address, phone number and email.
Claiming membership on a website and printing it on the document are two different things. The officer reading your file can pick up the phone and check.
No, and neither can your husband, wife, parent or friend.
UK offices need the birth certificate translation to come from someone independent, with nothing to gain from your application. A translation you did yourself is treated the same as sending no translation at all.
That is the whole reason a registered company has to sign it.
The long one, every time.
It names both parents, and the office matches those names against the rest of your papers. The short version leaves the parents out, which is why it often comes back.
In your country the long version may be called Certificado Literal de Nacimiento (Spain), Certidao de Nascimento Inteiro Teor (Brazil and Portugal), Copie Integrale (France) or Odpis Zupelny (Poland).
Send it anyway and we will look at it first.
We regularly get files named “Birth Certificate Short” uploaded for a UK passport application. We would rather tell you at the quote stage than have you find out from the office weeks later.
Sometimes the short one is fine. Often it is not. Either way you will get a straight answer.
Yes, both sides please.
Stamps, registry notes and corrections are often on the back. If an officer sees writing on your original that is missing from the birth certificate translation, they will stop and ask about it.
One customer told us upfront that their certificate was a single double-sided page. That one line saved us both a round of emails.
Yes, and it is included in the price.
An apostille or legalisation page carries text of its own, so it goes into the same certified set as the certificate. Send us every page you have, front and back.
It is more common than you would think. UK certificates come in English and Welsh, and Spanish ones sometimes carry Basque or Catalan.
We only charge you for the part that actually needs translating, and we add a clear note on the page explaining the other language.
No. A clear photo or a scan is all we need, and the original stays with you.
That matters, because the office may want to see your original next to our translation.
Take the photo in daylight, get all four corners in the frame, and do both sides. If a shot comes out blurry we will ask for another one rather than guess.
From £25 a page. Same-day work is £50 to £70 a page.
Three things move the figure: the language, how much writing is on the certificate, and how soon you need it.
Six things move the price. Nothing else does.
What does not change the price: the certification page, the signature and stamp, and standard UK postage. Those are inside every quote already.
No. Your quote already covers the translation, the signed certification page and standard UK postage.
The notary is charged separately when you need one, because a notary is a separate legal officer with their own fee. If that applies to you, we show it in the same quote so you see the full cost at once.
Yes, and this is where most people save.
Two children, both partners, or a birth certificate alongside a marriage certificate — send them in one order and you get a single bundle price. Ordering them one at a time over three weeks costs more and takes longer.
Most are ready in 24 to 48 hours. Same-day is possible when a deadline is right on top of you.
A clean printed certificate moves quickly. An older one covered in handwriting and registry stamps takes longer, and an apostille page adds a few hours because it is translated too.
Five things, and you control two of them.
The two you control are the last two. Take the photo in daylight with all four corners visible, do both sides, and send everything in one go. That alone often saves a day.
An apostille sits outside all of this. That part is handled by a government office and the timing is not ours to promise.
Tell us the date when you send the photo and we will answer straight away.
We confirm before taking payment, not after. If we cannot make your date, we say so rather than taking the order and hoping.
One customer told us they needed it by the 13th. That single line is more useful to us than anything else in the message.
Put the date the office needs the birth certificate translation, not the date you think we need it by.
A customer once told us they were not sure what to write. If you are unsure too, just type your real deadline in the message box instead. We will work from that.
Yes, and it is a big part of what we do.
Offices in Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, France, Greece, Iraq, Egypt and the Philippines all want papers in their own language. Your UK certificate is already in English, so nobody here needs it translated — it is the office in the other country that cannot read it.
We have dedicated pages for English to Polish, English to Italian, English to Spanish, English to French, English to German, English to Arabic and English to Japanese birth certificate translation.
Yes. Forward us the email or letter they sent you.
Every embassy words its request slightly differently. We would rather read what you were actually given than guess and have your birth certificate translation come back.
Yes. Germany, Portugal, Italy and Poland all work this way.
Your UK birth certificate goes into their language, usually with a notary stamp. Tell us which country and which office, because the requirements differ from one place to the next.
It depends on what you are applying for. These come up most:
Send them all in one order. One price, one delivery, and nothing left behind to order in a panic next week. This comes up most on birth certificate translation for marriage registration and birth certificate translation for UK immigration files.
It can, so tell us at the start and we will handle it.
A name written in Arabic, Persian, Chinese, Ukrainian, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali or Thai script can be spelt two or three ways in English, and all of them are correct. That is exactly the problem.
Send us the spelling from your passport and we will use that one in the birth certificate translation, so nothing in your file disagrees with anything else.
Yes, and a fair share of our work starts this way.
Send us the letter you were given along with your original certificate. It is usually one of three things — no date on the page, no translator details, or a name that did not match your passport.
We read what was actually said, explain it to you in plain words, and produce a version that answers it. Most are back within 24 hours. If a birth certificate translation we produced is ever refused, we put it right at no charge.
Yes. A birth certificate carries your date of birth, your place of birth and your parents' names, and we treat it that way.
Your file is seen by the translator, the person who checks their work, and the notary if one is involved. Nobody else. We do not pass your details on and we do not use your documents for anything other than your order.
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