Hi All,

I've been told by hospital that when they write the birth certificate for my first child they have to write in in Thai but my name as shown in my passport is in English, i've been told that is not a problem getting it changed at city hall where they translate it in to English, the thing that worrys me is when they said to my gf can you spell this for us in Thai then took a look at my passport and said were work it out. Is this a straight foward sound system? as i can only see it creating problems.

Please help anyone if you know how this system works, thanks.

Chris.

They will probably mess it up, but even if they fail to translate it properly, whats the real outcome?

It's not like everybody will be forced to call her the incorrectly translated name, its unlikely to cause any real issues.

I've been told by hospital that when they write the birth certificate for my first child they have to write in in Thai but my name as shown in my passport is in English, i've been told that is not a problem getting it changed at city hall where they translate it in to English, the thing that worrys me is when they said to my gf can you spell this for us in Thai then took a look at my passport and said were work it out. Is this a straight foward sound system? as i can only see it creating problems.

If you've got a surname that sounds very different to how it's spelled, it might be problematic. My surname of 'White' translated real easily and any official documents I have all have the same spelling: ไวท์

If you decide on a spelling for your surname with your girlfriend and make sure she checks the way they spell it, you should always have consistency that way. Certainly the official departments we've been to have all deferred to my wife on the spelling of my name.

I've been told by hospital that when they write the birth certificate for my first child they have to write in in Thai but my name as shown in my passport is in English, i've been told that is not a problem getting it changed at city hall where they translate it in to English, the thing that worrys me is when they said to my gf can you spell this for us in Thai then took a look at my passport and said were work it out. Is this a straight foward sound system? as i can only see it creating problems.

If you've got a surname that sounds very different to how it's spelled, it might be problematic. My surname of 'White' translated real easily and any official documents I have all have the same spelling: ไวท์

If you decide on a spelling for your surname with your girlfriend and make sure she checks the way they spell it, you should always have consistency that way. Certainly the official departments we've been to have all deferred to my wife on the spelling of my name.

About 18 months ago I decided to get married,I already had a 1 year old son and had another on the way,so I went to British embassy Bangkok and got eveything I needed to marry up at our local ampur.Went to the ampur with everything to be told there was a different spelling of my surname compaired with my sons surename on his birth certificate.There are 2 letter Ts in the thai alpherbet and tortahan had been used on my sons birth cetificate and tortung had been used on my marrige documents,ampur refused to marry us.

ampur refused to marry us.

How did you get it resolved?

ampur refused to marry us.

How did you get it resolved?

First of all we contacted the translater in Bangkok and he said tipx it out,or if we wanted to to send the docs back to him and he would do it,I didnt like the idea of mucking about with goverment forms so I decided to send them via regesterd post and let the translater do It.After about 2 weeks of no response from the translater we started phoneing every day and I told them there was 100 baht in the envelope suddenly our letter got to the top of the pile and it was delt with,it took about another week for it to return by post.When it arrived,all he had done was tipx out the mistakes and write over the top so I wasnt that confident on my return to the ampur that it would be accepted,and sure enough it wasnt, the boss of the ampur did not take kindly to people changeing goverment papers that had been stamped with Thai seals.So we were back to square one.It looked like we would have to start all over again,however while we were still at the ampur we phoned the translater in Bangkok and got the boss of the ampur to have a word with him,by what I can make out the boss of the ampur which was a Lady gave him a telling off and told him his solution to the problem was not acceptable.So my lady pleaded for some help and advise to resolve the matter.Well I had suggested to my lady that maybe a cash donation to the the ampur might help and sure enough the minute 1000 baht was suggested then vip treatment begain,corrections were made and we were married within 30 mins,it could all have been done a month earlier.So im weary of forms and my problem was with the letter T for which there are 2,god help anyone who has a problem with the letter K course theres 5 of them.But jokeing apart ive had little problem regestering my kids birth and birth certificates,I think my problem was that Ive used 2 translaters one in Bangkok and the other up country,so try to stick to one.Changeing Thai names to english and english to thai is pretty easy,the kids get me to do it so they can see their name in english,just learn the thai alpherbet and you can have quite good fun.

Check every letter on every document. Not a lot of work, and it can save so much hassle. And decide with your wife or other knowledgeable person what the best / most consistent way is to transliterate a Western name to Thai, then stick to it and VERIFY.

I do translations myself now together with my wife. What' the point in lame translators who can't even get a name right. The final drop was when a translator managed to copy an ID card number wrong, wasn;t even translation related, just SLOPPY.

That was when I said: "The sloppyness ends here"

And we've been living happily every after, translating our own documents.

EDIT:

TIP 1: Note that for translations to be legalized you need to include a line "Certified Correct Translation" somewhere, with dotted line below where you sign (or whoever did the translation).

TIP 2: If you own a portable printer and a laptop then you will NEVER be sent away at the legalization counter again. They don't like something? Hey there you are, 2 minutes later they have version 2.

TIP 3: It seems on some things they're very strict and other things they don't really mind that much. Like on a birth certificate they inlcude the Chinese astrology star sign. So I asked "I put 'year of the rooster' or should that be 'year of the chicken' and got an 'arai godai! with a smile wider than an A380's wingspan. This leaniency also seems highly related to the person at the counter and his/her mood of the day.

TIP 4: For many things you can just come back on a time/date when a particularly fussy person isn't there and get it all done without making any changes at all. In this case, I believe a marriage can be registered at any district office, not per se the one where your wife registered. They're not the only fish in the sea and their stamps & typewriters are not made of solid gold.

Edited August 24, 200718 yr by Sanpatong