Birth Certificate Translation - UK Edition

September 25, 2018 9:40 AM

Mr Bookish and I are getting married. According to the legal documents from our Scottish registrar, I need to have my Danish birth certificate translated. It is a handwritten document from the 1970s with distinct penmanship. I have reached out to translation agencies (as linked by my embassy) that all have responded in semi-broken English expressing confusion that I require their services. This makes me nervous. Fellow MeFites, have you had a certified translation from anyone in the UK? How did you find them? Did they require you to forward the original document? Any leads would be gratefully accepted.
posted by kariebookish to Law & Government (6 answers total)

I needed to have a birth certificate from another European country translated into English for US immigration purposes and basically what we ended up doing is requesting a copy on the standard EU form, which has English on it. That worked perfectly for us but hopefully someone with more UK-specific knowledge will be able to speak to whether that will work in this case.
posted by karbonokapi at 9:48 AM on September 25, 2018

Caveat: I'm in the US -- but when dealing with something similar we used apostille services. They were very well versed in translating official documents. The UK and Denmark are both signatory to the Apostille Convention so you should be able to find an apostille to help.
posted by BlahLaLa at 10:44 AM on September 25, 2018

If it were me (I'm a translator), I'd search here for Danish to English and contact a few individuals. Agencies are fine if you need loads of different languages, but for a highly specific job like this you can cut out the middle man and probably get a better service, or at least a good referral to someone who can help. Good luck!
posted by altolinguistic at 10:53 AM on September 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

Professional translator here; I would try the directory on the (British) Institute of Translation and Interpreting website:

www.iti.org.uk/component/itisearch/?view=translators

This should allow you to work directly wtih a professional translator with experience in this field.
posted by delphic at 10:59 AM on September 25, 2018

Here's a list of supposedly reputable Danish to English translators from the ITI, the professional body for translation in the UK. They also have something about official translations

And here's a couple of pre-screened people in the UK on a major job posting site for translations, some not-screened people from the same site

You really shouldn't have to forward the piece of paper, just a clearly legible scan in pdf form or similar. You should expect the translator to want to see the whole thing before giving you a quote (and plz remember if you pay peanuts you get monkeys!)
posted by runincircles at 11:11 AM on September 25, 2018

Are you sure it needs to be certified? I've gone through this a couple times and just did it myself.
posted by Literaryhero at 12:07 AM on September 26, 2018