Civil & Vital Records Translation Services

When you need civil document translation

You need it the moment a registry, embassy, consulate, or immigration department asks for a vital record in a language other than the one it was issued in. The common paths: USCIS petitions and adjustment of status, passport and citizenship applications, marriage or adoption abroad, registering a birth or death with a foreign civil registry, visa and residency filings, and name-change or descent proceedings that turn on what a register actually recorded.

If the office asks for a "certified translation", a "translation with certificate of accuracy", or an "official translation", that is this service — the same standard across every document family on this page.

What we translate

Five families of civil document, grouped here for convenience — each translated to the standard its own receiving authority actually applies.

What we check in every civil record

• The name must match your passport. This is the single commonest cause of a rejected or delayed submission. A Greek Δημήτριος may be Dimitrios, Demetrios or Dimitris; a Turkish İ becomes a dotless I in systems that cannot render it; a Russian Дмитрий is Dmitry, Dmitriy or Dmitri depending on the transliteration standard used. We render your name as your passport spells it and note the original form, so the receiving officer sees one person recorded several ways rather than a discrepancy to investigate.
• Marginal notes carry legal weight. Civil registers record later events — a marriage, a legitimation, a correction — in the margin of the original entry, and these are part of the record, not clutter. A translation that renders only the center of the page is an incomplete record, and it is refused as one.
• An extract is not a certificate, and the two are not interchangeable. Registries issue several different papers from the same entry. Greece issues a ληξιαρχική πράξη γάμου alongside a short-form πιστοποιητικό γάμου; Italy issues a full certificato and an abbreviated estratto. If what you hold does not look like what the office described, tell us — we would rather say so before translating than after.
• Everything on the sheet is content. Registrar seals, embossed stamps, revenue stickers, reference numbers, and any wording printed on the reverse are all translated or noted. Nothing is treated as decoration.
• ID cards and residence permits carry data on both sides. Issue and expiry dates, a machine-readable zone, and sometimes an address or biometric reference sit on the reverse of the card. Both sides are part of one document, translated and delivered together, not as two separate pages.
• Police clearance certificates expire quickly. Most issuing authorities set a validity window of three to six months — Greece's own Αντίγραφο Ποινικού Μητρώου is valid for exactly three. The date that matters is the certificate's, not the translation's — if yours is close to expiring, order the translation and submit both together rather than waiting.

How it works

Order in one continuous flow through your order portal. You are notified as soon as the certified document is ready, and the receiving office can verify it independently by its order code.

Certification and what you receive

• A complete, word-for-word translation with a signed certification of accuracy and a signed statement of truth
• The EnLatin stamp and a unique order-linked verification code
• Three-level review: translator, reviser, and finalizing senior philologist
• ISO/IEC 27001 handling: encrypted transfer and storage, deletion 45 days after delivery

Where these documents get used

Each receiving authority has its own emphasis, but none of them evaluate our translation on its own terms — they evaluate your original against their own requirements, and expect the translation to match it exactly.

How pricing works

Civil document translation is priced per page at €22.50, confirmed at checkout before any charge. Most vital records, extracts, and clearance certificates are a single page. Volume discounts apply automatically from three pages onward — worth knowing if you are preparing a family's records or a full application file together.

The signed certification of accuracy, the signed statement of truth, the EnLatin stamp, and the verifiable order code are included as standard — certification is never an added charge. Where a sworn translation or an apostille is required by your destination, we will say so before you order.

The scope of our undertaking

We translate the birth certificate, extract, or clearance certificate you already have — requesting or renewing the record itself belongs to the issuing registry or police authority.

Your document is translated exactly as it stands. If it contains an error — a misspelled name, a wrong date — we translate what it says and flag it to you; the correction belongs to the issuing authority, and a translation that quietly fixed it would not match the document you are submitting alongside it.

Apostilles and notarial acts come from the competent authority in the country that issued the original — we translate the document once they are attached.

If a translation is refused because of the quality or certification form of our work, we correct it or refund it — send us the authority's written reason within thirty days. Requirements differ by country and by department, and some require a sworn translation or a notarization or apostille in addition; we will tell you which applies to your destination before you order rather than after.

How to prepare your file

• Send the complete document — every side that carries printing, any continuation sheet, and the relevant pages of a family record book where the event is recorded as an entry.
• Include stamps, seals, revenue stickers, and any apostille already attached. All of it is part of the record.
• Send the spelling of your name exactly as your passport shows it. This is the most useful thing you can give us, and it prevents the commonest reason submissions are queried.
• If you are ordering a police clearance certificate, tell us the date it was issued, so we can flag it if it will have expired by the time you plan to submit it.
• Tell us the receiving office and country, and your deadline, so we can confirm whether certification alone is sufficient.

Why EnLatin

EnLatin is certified to ISO 17100:2015 for translation services (TÜV SÜD, certificate No. 9931000357) and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 for information security management (TÜV NORD, certificate No. 44121231258). We have been translating official documents for twelve years across ten languages. Every civil record is read by three sets of eyes — translator, reviser, and finalizing senior philologist — before it is stamped with a unique verification code that any receiving authority can check at enlatin.net/verify. Where a civil register itself kept its records in Latin — parish registers of baptism, marriage, and burial across Catholic Europe and Latin America — the work falls to the same desk, under the oversight of founder Konstantin Er, PhD in philology.

Frequently asked questions

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