Certified Translation
Contracts, court orders, powers of attorney and witness statements, translated and certified for UK courts, solicitors and the Home Office.
Prism Linguistics translates legal documents in more than 300 languages, certified for HM Courts & Tribunals Service, the Home Office, UKVI and UK solicitors. Short standard documents are quoted as a fixed price and usually ready within one to two working days; longer contracts and bundles are priced per word, typically £0.12 to £0.18.
Every job goes to a native-speaker legal translator and is read by a second linguist before it leaves us. Send a scan or phone photo through the quote form and a fixed price comes back within one working hour during office hours.
A certified legal document translation is the translation plus a signed statement of accuracy on our letterhead, accepted by HM Courts & Tribunals Service, the Home Office, UKVI and UK solicitors. Short standard documents are quoted as a fixed price per document, usually ready within one to two working days. Longer material is priced per word, and you receive a PDF with a stamped hard copy by tracked Royal Mail where paper is needed.
This page is about the documents themselves: contracts, court orders, powers of attorney, judgments and witness statements, and when certifying them is worth paying for. The wider discipline, the terminology and the full pricing detail live on our legal translation services page, and what UK certification is (no sworn translators here, unlike much of Europe) is explained on the certified translation page.
Usually somebody else decides for you. A judge directs that a foreign-language exhibit be served in English. A mortgage lender wants your overseas power of attorney in English before releasing funds. An employer asks for the contract you signed in Bucharest. Probate stalls because the will is in Greek.
Solicitors send us the bulk of it: hearing bundles, disclosure, orders made abroad that a UK court needs to read. Private clients bring the rest, often a single document holding up something larger. Visa and asylum paperwork has its own patterns, covered on our immigration document translation page, and civil certificates needed as exhibits in family proceedings are dealt with under birth certificate translation.
Anything filed with a court or served on another party normally needs to be certified, because the court has to be able to rely on the English text. Court orders, judgments, witness statements made in another language and foreign-language exhibits all sit in that group.
A working translation is different. If you're deciding whether a document matters before disclosing it, or reading the other side's material for your own understanding, certification adds cost without adding anything you need. We'll say so when that's the case. Plenty of our quotes go out cheaper than the client expected.
Exhibits keep their pagination and layout. The translation follows the original page for page, so counsel can hold paragraph seven of each side by side, and stamps, seals and handwritten margin notes are accounted for rather than silently dropped. Medical records filed as exhibits in injury claims get the same treatment; the clinical side is covered on our medical document translation page.
Contract translation to English goes to a native English speaker who reads the source language fluently, because defined terms, obligations and dates leave no room for approximation. A certified Romanian translation of an employment contract for a tribunal claim is a typical week's work; so is a supplier agreement arriving from Germany ahead of a dispute.
Going the other way, an English contract for signature abroad goes to a native speaker of the target language. Certify it if it's headed into evidence or to a regulator. Skip certification if it's for negotiation, and the price drops accordingly.
Powers of attorney travel more than most legal documents. Coming into the UK, a certified translation is usually all a bank or solicitor asks for. Going abroad, the receiving country often wants more: notarisation, and sometimes an apostille under the Hague Convention on top.
We prepare the certified translation ready for your notary; the notarisation and apostille steps are then handled by your notary or solicitor, not by us. The notarised translation page explains the sequence. Tell us the destination country when you send the document and we'll flag what it's likely to need.
Not the original. A clear scan or a phone photo is fine, as long as every word is legible, including stamps, seals and anything handwritten in a margin. Tell us the language, the deadline and which court or body will receive the translation.
Legal material is treated as privileged by default. Handling is UK GDPR compliant, files are shared only with the linguists on your job, and we'll sign your firm's NDA where required. That's been routine since 2013, run from our Warrington head office. Everything else we translate sits on the translation services page.
Upload a scan or clear photo through the online quote form, or email it over. Tell us the language, the deadline and which court or body will receive the translation.
A project manager replies within one working hour during office hours with a fixed price and turnaround. Short standard documents are priced per page, longer material per word.
A native-speaker legal translator does the work and a second linguist reviews it. You receive the PDF, with a stamped hard copy by tracked Royal Mail where the receiving body wants paper.
Anything heading for a courtroom is translated by a professionally qualified native speaker with legal experience, then read against the source by a second linguist. Legal wording rewards that caution; "shall" and "may" are not interchangeable, and a judge will notice if an exhibit reads loosely. Where the receiving party wants to see credentials, we can supply the translator's details with the certification.
Short standard documents, a court order, a power of attorney, a single-page decree, are priced per page at £35 to £60 with certification included. Longer contracts, judgments and bundles are priced per word, typically £0.12 to £0.18 for legal work in common European languages, with rarer languages a little higher.
We accept Legal Aid Agency rates for eligible matters. Urgent work carries a premium, and short documents have same day translation options subject to capacity. Honest ranges for everything are on the pricing page; for your document, send it through the quote form and a fixed price comes back within one working hour during office hours.
Send a clear scan, tell us the deadline and where it's going. A project manager replies within one working hour during office hours.