# Translation of documents for official purposes



## J&R

Can someone please recommend a website that I can use to translate the documents from English to French for OFII and other official branches in France?


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## eairicbloodaxe

J&R said:


> Can someone please recommend a website that I can use to translate the documents from English to French for OFII and other official branches in France?


Deepl.com is great.


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## Bevdeforges

DeepL is very good (though to translate whole documents you may well need to take a subscription).

But if OFII and other government agencies are asking for official translations, they often insist on a "certified translation" - which means you need to find a traductor assermenté. Figure about 20 to 60€ per page for the assermenté translations.


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## Crabtree

As Bev says it has to be done by an official registered translator stamped and certified.In addition of course a website will do more of a literal translation and a slightly wrong word or phrase can be problematic


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## Bevdeforges

But do be sure to ask if they want a "certified" translation (usually what they expect if they ask for a translation at all). You may find that fewer and fewer services need or want the "certified" translations. In some cases all they need is the official looking piece of paper with the relevant information on it and an official looking stamp or seal. The "certified" translations are supposed to include some element of validation - though these days I seriously doubt anyone can "validate" the various documents from the US, with each state having their own versions of most documents.


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## EuroTrash

I think the point of a traduction assermentée is to ensure that the translation is accurate, in the sense of, it hasn't been wilfully mistranslated. Traducteurs assermentés have been vetted and they've taken their oaths to the court etc, and by stamping and signing the translation, of which they have (or should have) read and translated every word themselves, they confirm its accuracy. Whereas, take the example of a student applying for a competitive place on an advanced course of study, who has to provide copies of their grade transcripts etc from a US school as part of the assessment process - they might be tempted to change DeepL's translation in one or two places, like changing "fail" into "pass", and their tutor's assessment of them as an average student into an outstanding student. And once they have done that and printed off the translation, then short of proofreading the one document against the other word by word, nobody is likely to pick that up. So to guard against that type of fraud they get the translation done and certified by a translator assermenté. The translator is not vouching for the validity of the original document, just the accuracy of the translation.

Saying that I think often authorities ask for certified translations as a matter of course even where there is no risk of fraud because there's nothing to be gained, but nonetheless it is regarded as best practice.


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## Bevdeforges

I think there is also another factor involved in all this. (Though I agree completely about the ease with which a "personal translation" could be tampered with.) For someone with documents in English, there are plenty of folks in the administration who can get at least the gist of the information based on their "high school English". Especially for documents like birth certificates - which often have clearly labeled boxes that must be filled in, like "Name" "Address" "Mother" "Father" etc. These kinds of documents pose little or no risk for the offices and may be acceptable without an official translation.

More complicated things (like driver's licenses, for example) may actually be "better" interpreted by an accompanying "International Driving Permit" - which translates the type of license issued (usually into standard license categories). More complex documents, say marriage or divorce certificates, may require a certified translation (i.e. to be sure that all the important subtleties have been translated, for example - things like marital regime, or confirmation that property division has been done or not as the case may be). 

But like many parts of the "rules" here in France, these things are constantly evolving.


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## EuroTrash

Plus of course there's the issue of, you have to treat all nationalities the same, so whatever rules you have in place also need to cover documents written in Chinese, Arabic, Greek script etc. If nobody in the office has any knowledge of Chinese, and you can't point to a rule saying that a certified translation is required, you have no way of knowing whether the original document that is presented to you side by side with a French document headed acte de naissance is even a birth certificate at all, let alone whether all the details are correct. It could be a shopping list for all you know.

I may be biased but I think it will be a while yet before French admin officially starts accepting translated documents without satisfying itself that they don't contain either unintentional or intentional inaccuracies.


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## Bevdeforges

EuroTrash said:


> I may be biased but I think it will be a while yet before French admin officially starts accepting translated documents without satisfying itself that they don't contain either unintentional or intentional inaccuracies.


I think you're right - but the issue here is the "fallback" - it sometimes depends on what exactly the document is supposed to "prove" to the office you've submitted it to. We've had multiple cases of people saying that an organization like CPAM wants a birth certificate, but doesn't require the translation. I suspect that's because CPAM normally also wants to see your titre de séjour - and they can be pretty sure that the government has some sort of officially translated copy of your birth certificate on file to support the titre de séjour if a question should come up.


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## J&R

Thank you all for the input. I should have mentioned that I was looking for a recommendation for certified French translation website when I started the discussion. My marriage certificate is in English but my birth certificate is from Brazil. I had it translated into English for the visa interview in LA, but just to be on the safe side, I would like to have it translated into French along with the other documents. Since we are getting close to applying for the Visa, and moving to France, I want to make sure that I have everything ready.


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## BackinFrance

J&R said:


> Thank you all for the input. I should have mentioned that I was looking for a recommendation for certified French translation website when I started the discussion. My marriage certificate is in English but my birth certificate is from Brazil. I had it translated into English for the visa interview in LA, but just to be on the safe side, I would like to have it translated into French along with the other documents. Since we are getting close to applying for the Visa, and moving to France, I want to make sure that I have everything ready.


For the visa they normally accept documents in the language of the country where you are applying or in French, but where translations are required within France they would need to be done by a traducteur assermenté. The latter is best done after you arrive and by a translator close to where you will be staying so that you can take your documents in and go in to collect the official translations which will bear an embossed and signed stamp. Copies are not acceptable, but you can ask the translator to provide multiples of them, which should be provided at a reduced price (usually a significant reduction for the additional ones because they do not require additional work in terms of translation).


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## BackinFrance

And when you are looking for the translator, be sure to shop around because their charges can vary greatly.


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## BackinFrance

Of course you also need to bear in mind that France will often require that you submit a recent document, in particular a recent birth certificate with the relevant official translation.


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## dextcorp

I had good success with translayte.com and alpis.fr services. Alpis in particular has a lot of positive reviews on google and many french review websites. They have a physical office in Paris too.


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## BackinFrance

Be aware that the French administration does not accept diy translations in those instances where it asks you to supply a translation.


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## ARPC

RushTranslate has an Offical French for legal docs option, it’s relatively cheap and fast and I use it for all my immigration stuff. Courage.


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