Anyone who regularly reads Lawyers Hint will have noticed how much legal work is now international.
Our recent pieces here have looked at making a Will in Dubai when your family lives overseas, and at the green card application process, where professional document translations turn up in the list of costs.
Lower down the scale, in family, immigration and private client files, a more ordinary version of the problem comes up all the time – a client has a foreign document, or needs a UK one accepted abroad, and somebody (the client, the other side, an embassy, a bank) says the documents need to be translated and “certified”.
Or “notarised”. Or “apostilled”.
Often all three turn up in the same email, as if they were interchangeable.
They aren’t.
And the cost of guessing wrong isn’t just the fee. It’s the three weeks you lose while the papers go back to the start of the queue.
There’s a newer wrinkle too. In England and Wales, when the Civil Justice Council’s working group on AI published its final report on 29 October, one recommendation was that the CJC consider whether guidance is needed on litigants in person using publicly available AI translation tools.
It’s a fair worry. A free translation app will produce something that looks like a translation, but nobody stands behind it, and none of the formal routes below will accept it.
So here’s the plain-English version, with the actual rules where there are any. It’s written from the English and Welsh side, but the same steps apply if you’re advising a client whose documents are heading to the UK or need to leave it.
Understanding Certified Translations
Here’s the quickest way to understand the three different types of official translations: According to document certification experts at TS24 London, professional certified translation services handle language and accuracy, a notary deals with identity and formality, and an apostille tells a foreign authority that a UK signature or seal is real.
If the document is staying in the UK, for the Home Office, Visa and Immigration application at the UKVI, a court in England and Wales or a university, you almost always need a standard certified translation and nothing else.
If it’s going abroad, you may well need the lot, and the order matters.
Certified translations
There’s a slightly awkward truth here, which is that translation isn’t a regulated profession in the UK, and nobody has laid down one official wording for a “certified” translation.
What people mean by it, in practice, is a complete translation with a signed, dated statement from the translator or agency saying it’s accurate, along with enough detail that whoever receives it can check who did the work.
Two bodies are more specific than that.
The Home Office is one.
Under paragraph 39B of the Immigration Rules, if a specified document isn’t in English or Welsh you have to send the original along with a full translation the caseworker can independently verify.
The translation must be dated and must include confirmation that it’s accurate, the full name and signature of the translator (or an authorised official of the company) and their contact details.
For leave to remain and ILR there’s an extra hurdle: the translation has to be certified by a qualified translator, with their credentials included. This is where the helpful bilingual cousin comes unstuck. Fluency isn’t the test.
The civil courts are the other. Practice Direction 32 covers foreign-language evidence in a couple of places. For a witness statement, the party relying on it has it translated and files the original-language statement, and the translator signs the original and certifies the translation as accurate (para 23.2). Affidavits go a step further, because the translator has to make their own affidavit verifying the translation and exhibit both versions (para 10.2).
For the ordinary run of supporting evidence, things like payslips, bank statements, marriage certificates and school reports, a decent certified translation does the job. Paying a notary on top won’t make a UK decision maker look at it any more kindly.
Notarised translations
Notaries public in England and Wales are appointed and regulated through the Faculty Office of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and notarial work is reserved to them under the Legal Services Act 2007. Most of what they do is about documents leaving the country.
The notary’s role with a translation is narrower than people assume. Usually they’re confirming the translator’s identity and that the translator made the declaration of accuracy in front of them. Unless the notary reads the language, they aren’t checking the translation itself. So a notarised translation isn’t a “better” translation. It’s one with an extra layer of formality that some foreign authorities insist on.
You’ll generally need one when an overseas authority has asked for it (ideally in writing), when the papers are going to a foreign court, land registry or company registry, or when the translation has to be apostilled afterwards. If none of that applies, ask before you book the appointment.
Apostilles
In the UK, apostilles come from the FCDO Legalisation Office. GOV.UK describes the process quite simply: the office checks whether “any signatures, stamps or seals match their own records” and, if they do, attaches the certificate. The office makes no judgement on whether the content is true, and certainly none on whether a translation is any good.
That’s exactly why translations headed abroad usually pass through a notary first. The Legalisation Office will deal with documents like contracts, powers of attorney and qualification certificates provided they’ve been certified by a UK public official, such as a notary or a solicitor, whose signature it can check against its records. A translator’s signature doesn’t fall into that category. Hence the familiar chain: translate, notarise, apostille.
A few things trip people up. The FCDO can only legalise documents issued in the UK, so a Nigerian or Polish certificate has to be dealt with in Nigeria or Poland. At the time of writing, the standard paper service costs £45 a document and can take up to 25 working days plus postage, while an e-Apostille is £35 and is usually back within two working days (not every document can go that route).
And the apostille only works between countries signed up to the 1961 Hague Apostille Convention, of which the Hague Conference counted 130 contracting parties in June 2026. Outside that club, expect a trip to the relevant embassy as well.
The order you do things in
Most of the wasted money we see comes from doing the right steps in the wrong sequence. Before anybody translates anything, the receiving authority needs to tell you which of these it wants. Does it want the original apostilled here and then translated in its own country? Some countries have official sworn translators and won’t take anyone else’s work. Does it want the original apostilled, then the whole bundle (apostille included) translated in the UK, notarised and apostilled again? Or will a plain UK certified translation do?
Spain is a useful example. It has sworn translators appointed by its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and some Spanish bodies would rather see a translation from one of them than a UK translation with a notarial certificate stapled to it. You only find out by asking, and it’s worth getting the answer in an email you can point to later.
Before you instruct a translator or a notary, then, it helps to have pinned down a few things. What exactly does the receiving body want: certified, notarised, apostilled, embassy-legalised? Do they want the original apostilled or a certified copy? Does the apostille itself need translating? Are the names, dates and places spelt identically across every document in the bundle? And is there enough time? Between the notary, the Legalisation Office and couriers, two or three weeks can disappear from a matter that looked straightforward.
Where that leaves you
If it’s staying in the UK, get a proper certified translation that meets the rules of whoever’s receiving it, and stop there. If it’s going overseas, start from what the foreign authority has asked for and work backwards.