"certified" Translation

[a1falang]

A lot of translation services advertise "certified" translation. What does it mean? Does the Thai goverment certify or license translation companies or individual translators as meeting minimum standards or passing some sort of competency test? This seems different to "authentication", something the Ministry of Foreign Affairs does, but only for translations of documents/certificates issued by the Thai government.

Edited April 15, 2007 by a1falang

[sabaijai]

A lot of translation services advertise "certified" translation. What does it mean? Does the Thai goverment certify or license translation companies or individual translators as meeting minimum standards or passing some sort of competency test? This seems different to "authentication", something the Ministry of Foreign Affairs does, but only for translations of documents/certificates issued by the Thai government.

A certified translation is one issued by a government-registered translation agency. I don't know what the standards are, if any, other than registering as a translation business.

[Maestro]

I believe this is how it works:

1. The translator certifies with his signature that his translation is correct.

2. A government agency certifies that the translator’s signature is genuine.

3. Where required, a second government agency certifies that the signature of the official of the first government agency is genuine.

--

Maestro

[samran]

From Thai to English it works this way:

Thai translation shop does the translation. They are either registered, or 'well known' to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Consular Department.

Take that doco to MFA, and they will certify that the translation is correct.

Your home embassy, can then use that MFA certified document as a basis to then issue documents for that country.

Im my case, I've had a Thai tax return that was translated, certified, and then the UK embassy put their 'stamp' on it as well...it was a good as a document issue by the UK government themselves.

For my daughter, her Thai BC was translated into English, certified, and with that, we could get her Australian passport.

[madmitch]

Does anyone know anywhere in Phuket that I can use to get a certified translation of my daughter's birth certificate?

I'll also post this question in the phuket forum.

[Tarragona]

For my daughter, her Thai BC was translated into English, certified, and with that, we could get her Australian passport.

Having done something similar for my daughter at the British Embassy (plus a couple of other things recently), it seems to me that as far as the UK is concerned there is no need for any MFA certification. "Certified" is simply having the translator's stamp saying something along the lines that they certify the translation is good and correct.

This has been true for daughter's Thai birth certificate, wife's Thai ID card and our Thai marriage certificate in recent months. I have no idea if they actually checked out who the translator was.

Is this something peculiar to the British or is it only for certain matters? I'd be interested to know.

[samran]

I'm moving this to the general forum, as it isn't really Thai language related (in terms of learning the language), and it'll get better coverage there.

[grtaylor]

I believe this is how it works:

1. The translator certifies with his signature that his translation is correct.

2. A government agency certifies that the translator’s signature is genuine.

3. Where required, a second government agency certifies that the signature of the official of the first government agency is genuine.

--

Maestro

When I needed some documents certified and translated (from English to Thai - for a PR application) it worked like this:

1 The Consular official at my country's Embassy photocopied the document, and certified it as "a true copy . . ." etc. etc. on the back.

2 A 'registered' translator translated both the document, and the embassy certification of it into Thai.

3 The MFA in Chaeng Wattana verified the signature of the embassy official who certified the photocopy.

I'd love to know how this all worked in the days before photocopies . . . . .

Cheers,

G

Edited April 20, 2007 by grtaylor