Certified Translation
Certified translation of marriage certificates for spouse visas, register offices and name changes, accepted by UKVI and HM Passport Office.
A certified marriage certificate translation costs £35 to £60 per page, with the signed certification statement included, and is normally ready the next working day. Our translations are accepted by UKVI for spouse and partner visas, and by HM Passport Office, the Home Office, HMCTS, register offices, banks and most UK employers.
Send a clear scan or a phone photo of the certificate. A native-speaker translator does the work, a second linguist checks it, and you receive a certified PDF with the option of a stamped hard copy by tracked Royal Mail. We've certified documents this way since 2013, from our head office in Warrington. The general rules are on our certified translation page; this one covers marriage certificates specifically.
A marriage certificate issued abroad is perfectly good evidence of the marriage. But UK officials work in English (or Welsh), so a caseworker who can't read Urdu or Romanian can't rely on the document, and the receiving body asks for a certified English translation alongside the original. The situations below cover nearly every marriage certificate that crosses our desks.
The most common reason, by a distance. UKVI expects every supporting document that isn't in English or Welsh to come with a certified translation, and the marriage certificate sits at the centre of a spouse or partner visa application. A certificate issued in Lahore goes to a translator working from Urdu (a certified Urdu translation is one of the busiest jobs on our books); one from Bucharest goes to a Romanian specialist.
Marriage certificates rarely travel alone in a visa bundle. Children's certificates are covered on our birth certificate translation page, ID pages under passport translation, and the rest of the paperwork on the immigration document translation page. Quote the whole bundle at once for one price and one delivery date.
If you're marrying in England or Wales and either of you was married before, the registrar will want evidence that the earlier marriage ended. A divorce decree or a death certificate issued abroad needs to be in English before the notice appointment, and registrars are strict about it; people do get turned away and lose their slot. Divorce decrees and death certificates are handled exactly the same way as marriage certificates, at the same per-page price and turnaround.
Taking your spouse's surname? HM Passport Office wants the marriage certificate before issuing a passport in the new name, the DVLA wants it for the driving licence, and your bank will ask too. Later on, the same document proves entitlement: pension providers and probate solicitors routinely ask for a certified English translation when a widow claims a spouse's pension or an executor settles an estate. One translation tends to serve all of these, so keep the PDF safe.
Not the original. It never leaves your possession and nothing gets posted to us. A scan is ideal, but a phone photo is fine as long as the certificate lies flat, all four corners are in frame and every word is legible. Photograph the back too if it carries stamps, seals or handwritten notes; they must appear in the translation.
Two other things help. Tell us how the names are spelled in your passports: transliteration from Arabic, Cyrillic or Urdu script can go several ways, and the translation must match your other documents letter for letter or a caseworker will query it. And tell us who is receiving the translation, UKVI, a register office, a pension provider, so we can format the certification the way that body expects.
No account, no minimum spend.
Upload a clear scan or phone photo through the online quote form, or email it over. Tell us the language, your deadline and which organisation will receive the translation. Keep the original; we never need it.
We reply within one working hour during office hours with a fixed per-page price, certification included. The quote is the price you pay, and nothing starts until you confirm.
A native-speaker translator does the work and a second linguist checks it. You receive the certified PDF, normally the next working day for a standard certificate, with a stamped hard copy by tracked Royal Mail if you want one.
Marriage certificates carry formulaic legal phrases that vary by country, and a translator who hasn't seen them before tends to translate the words rather than the formula. Ours have. Each certificate goes to a professionally qualified native speaker, then a second linguist compares names, dates and places against the original before we sign the certification.
£35 to £60 per page, with the signed certification statement included rather than charged as an extra. Most marriage certificates fit on one page, so that per-page figure is usually the entire cost. Within the range, the price moves with the language (common European pairs sit at the lower end, rarer languages higher) and with legibility; a crisp modern certificate is quicker to work through than a faded 1970s original with a stamp over the names.
Longer supporting documents are priced per word instead: roughly £0.09 to £0.14 for standard content in common European languages, £0.12 to £0.18 for legal and certified work, more for rare languages. Full ranges are on our pricing page. A standard certificate is normally ready the next working day; if the notice appointment is tomorrow morning, same day translation is often possible for short documents, subject to capacity, so ring us rather than waiting on the form.
Everything is handled under UK GDPR, we'll sign an NDA where a firm requires one, and we accept Legal Aid Agency rates on eligible matters. Solicitors handling a wider matter will find the full picture on our translation services page.
If you married in the UK and a foreign authority wants your certificate in its own language, the receiving country may ask for a sworn or notarised version rather than a UK-style certified one. We don't provide or arrange notarisation or apostille ourselves; we prepare the certified translation in exactly the form your notary public needs, so the notarial step is quick. The detail is on our notarised translation page. Tell us the country and the receiving body and we'll tell you which format to order.
Send a scan or photo, tell us the deadline, and you'll have a fixed price within one working hour during office hours.