Why certified translations get rejected

The name does not match the passport

This is the most common cause by a distance. A birth certificate romanises a name one way, a passport another, and a marriage certificate a third. To the person reading them, that is three different people.

It happens most with Chinese names, where the same characters can be rendered in Hanyu Pinyin, in a dialect spelling, or in whatever the registering clerk wrote down decades ago. It also happens with patronymics, with names that include bin, binte or a/l, and with anyone whose passport drops a middle name their birth certificate keeps.

The fix is to decide, before translating, which spelling is authoritative. It is almost always the passport, because that is the document every other one gets checked against. A good translation follows the passport and notes the variant rather than silently picking one.

Part of the document was left out

A stamp in the corner, a handwritten annotation, an endorsement on the reverse, a registration number down the side. These look like clutter and are not: they are what tells the reader the document is genuine and current.

Sending only the page with the text on it, or only the front of a card, is the second most common reason a set comes back. So is translating only the pages you thought were relevant from a multi-page booklet.

Send everything, both sides, every page. It costs a little more and it removes the question.

The wrong level of certification was ordered

Certified, notarised and apostilled are three different things, and each is added on top of the one before. People routinely order the first when they needed the third, discover it weeks later, and start again.

Ordering too much is a waste of money. Ordering too little costs time you may not have. Neither is a translation problem, and neither is something a translator can decide for you: it depends entirely on who is receiving the document.

The scan was not legible

A photograph taken at an angle, in poor light, with a thumb over a corner, or of a photocopy of a photocopy. Anything genuinely illegible has to be marked as illegible in the translation, because guessing is exactly what a certificate of accuracy promises not to do.

A clear photograph of the whole page, taken square on in daylight, is enough. It does not need to be a professional scan.

It was translated by the wrong person

A translation done by the applicant, by a bilingual relative, or by a colleague who speaks the language will usually be refused however accurate it is. The authority is not questioning the language skill; it is asking for an independent party to put its name to the work.

That is what the certificate of accuracy provides, and it is the part that cannot be produced at home.

What to do before you order

Ask whoever is receiving the document three questions: whether they need it certified, notarised or apostilled; whether they want the original alongside the translation; and whether they have a deadline you should be working to. In writing if you can.

Those three answers prevent nearly every rejection described above, and they take one email to get.