What is a Certified Translation?

When you are required to submit a piece of document to a government or other official agency but in the translated state, you will have to submit a certified translation.

New to this? Start with our complete guide to certified translation for USCIS — requirements, cost and turnaround.

A certified translation is not the same as notarized translation although people often confuse between the both.

When a translator or the language service provider gives you a translated document and he or she has given a signed statement stating that the document has been translated in the right way and is a true representation of the actual document, it is called certified translation.

When do you need certified translation?

Certified translation is required in a variety of situations and some of them are mentioned below –

• Whenever you are submitting any legal document like that of death, birth, adopting agreements, marriage, business contracts or even court transcripts a certified translation is required when these documents are not written in the official language of that particular country.

• Foreign students who are planning to pursue further education in other countries also have to submit a certified translation of the documents.

• Immigration procedures often required a certified translation especially when the native language of your previous country does not match the official language of the country you are immigrating to and thus the documents cannot be read.

• Sometimes criminal records are required by HRs during recruitment and if the language is different then, a certified translation is required.

So, almost all official work which requires submission of documents require certified translation if there is an event of language change.