Our clients often ask us if we can provide 'certified', 'sworn' or 'official' translations, particularly of legal documents such as birth and marriage certificates.

The ITI (Institute of Translators and Interpreters) provides clear and comprehensive guidance on the different types of 'official' translations. Essentially, since the UK is a common law country and not a civil law county, there is no such thing as a sworn translator. This means the only options in the UK are certification, notarisation and legalisation.

According to the official UK government website, in order to certify a translation, a translator (or translation company) must confirm in writing on the translation:

• that it’s a ‘true and accurate translation of the original document’
• the date of the translation
• the full name and contact details of the translator or a representative of the translation company

This can be done by stamping and signing each page of the document and/or by providing a certificate that is attached to a copy of the original document and the translation. Certification is sufficient for most purposes, but to add extra weight translators can include evidence of their qualifications, in the form of post-nominal initials or a seal from an official body such as the ITI or CIOL (Chartered Insitute of Linguists).

If further authentication is required, the signing of the document can be witnessed by a solicitor (in the form of an affidavit) or Notary Public (notarisation). However, the solicitor or Notary cannot endorse the quality of the translation so this step only verifies the authenticity of the signature.  SImilarly, while an Apostille verifies the authenticity of the signature and ensures that the document is recognised in all States that signed the Hague Convention of 1961 (legalisation); it does not endorse the content of the document.

You can find more information about the certification services we offer here.

In the last few weeks we have had two young people join us here at Alphanumeric HQ to gain some work experience.
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Hannah recently graduated from university and was looking to gain some professional experience in the industry while in the process of applying for jobs. She shadowed Jo for a period of four weeks, working on some translation jobs, getting to understand our systems and processes and familiarising herself with translation software and resources. She is now working as a Bilingual Customer Services Operator so her skills are being put to good use!

Anna is currently studying for her A-levels and is planning to read Modern Foreign Languages at university. She has been exploring various career options and was keen to find out more about life as a freelance translator. She spent a day here learning about what our work involves and we gave her some advice on how to gain the necessary skills and further experience if she does decide to pursue a career in translation.

It's great to meet young people that are enthusiastic about languages and translation, whatever stage of education they are at,  and to be able to give them some help, advice and encouragement along the way!

Jo and Graham recently spent six days cycling the Donauradweg from Passau to Vienna. The weather and scenery were fantastic! Here's a taster of what they got up to:

We have just found out that Abi has successfully completed the MITI examination and can now join Jo as an accredited member of the ITI. We are absolutely delighted with this achievement!

We are very excited to announce that Jo’s translation of a major theological work, “Crucified and Resurrected”, has been published and will be available in print and Kindle edition from 15 November.

The English version of this distinguished work on Christology by scholar and theologian, Professor Ingolf Dalferth, represents many months of detailed and painstaking work and research. We are extremely proud of Jo’s efforts and of the end result, which has been acclaimed as ‘an admirable translation’ by Professor Sarah Coakley, University of Cambridge.
 
The book is available to pre-order now.

We are delighted to announce two recent successes within the partnership – you may have already noticed from her email signature that Jo is now a fully qualified member of the ITI. Abi has also recently achieved Certified Pro Status on Proz. We are really proud that our achievements have been recognised, and pleased to see new clients already coming our way as a result.

Welcome to our new website! We have been working hard on this for a while and we are very proud of the finished product. We hope that it will better reflect our business and give our new and existing clients a clear idea of who we are and how we operate. Please take a minute to have a browse and feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

We have a new office landline! This will enable us to differentiate between business and personal calls. It also means we can divert calls to the operations manager’s mobile so that you can contact us when we are out of the office.

Our new office number is +44 1432 340889. We would be grateful if you could update your records and use this number to contact us from now on.

We look forward to hearing from you soon!

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