Certified Translation
Certified translation of the passport photo page, priced per page, normally ready the next working day. And if you don't need one, we'll say so.
A certified passport translation costs £35 to £60 per page and is normally ready the next working day. Each one carries a signed statement of accuracy on our letterhead and is accepted by UK banks, employers, solicitors, the Home Office and UKVI. In almost every case we translate the photo page only, which makes this the quickest and cheapest certificate job on our books.
Prism Linguistics has been certifying documents since 2013, from a head office in Warrington, in more than 300 languages. Every job goes to a native-speaker translator and is read by a second linguist before it leaves us. One thing worth saying up front: a fair number of people who contact us about passport translation turn out not to need one at all. We'll tell you either way before you spend anything. The general rules on what counts as an official translation in the UK are on our certified translation page.
Four groups, mostly. Banks and building societies opening an account where the ID isn't in English. Employers running right-to-work checks who want the details of a foreign passport confirmed in writing. Solicitors preparing evidence, since a passport page often sits inside a wider bundle alongside immigration document translation. And some UKVI processes, where the passport is in a non-Latin script and the caseworker needs the names, dates and places set out in English.
Here's the part most agencies skip. Plenty of UK processes don't need a passport translated at all. Modern passports carry a machine-readable zone, the holder's details usually appear in Latin script alongside the local one, and UK organisations handle foreign passports every day. If you send us your photo page and the honest answer is that a translation would add nothing, we'll say so. That costs us a job now and again. It also means that when we do quote, you know the quote was needed.
In nearly every case we translate the photo page only, sometimes called the bio page: the page carrying your photograph, full name, date and place of birth, passport number, nationality, and the dates of issue and expiry. That's the page every receiving organisation cares about. If entry stamps or visa vignettes matter to your case, your solicitor will usually say which ones; we translate exactly those pages and leave the rest alone.
You never post us the passport itself. A clear scan, or a phone photo taken in decent light, is what we work from, provided every word and number is readable. Non-Latin scripts are the bulk of this work. A certified Arabic translation of a passport page is one of the most common small jobs we see, along with Ukrainian, Chinese and Farsi. And if a birth certificate translation is needed for the same application, sending both documents together in one order keeps things simpler at your end and ours.
No account, no original documents in the post. Most orders start and finish by email.
Upload a clear scan or phone photo through the quote form, or email it over. Tell us the language and which organisation has asked for the translation.
We reply within one working hour during office hours with a fixed per-page price, certification included. If the honest answer is that you don't need a translation at all, we say that instead.
A native-speaker translator does the work and a second linguist checks it. You receive a PDF with the signed certification, normally the next working day, plus a stamped hard copy by tracked Royal Mail if you need paper.
A passport bio page holds maybe thirty words, and every one of them is a name, a date or a place that has to match the rest of your paperwork exactly. So the job still goes to a professionally qualified native speaker, and a second linguist still checks it, the same as a forty-page contract. Short doesn't mean casual when a bank or UKVI is the reader.
Between £35 and £60 per page, with the certification statement included in the price. A passport is almost always a single page of translatable content, so most quotes land at the lower end. Rare languages sit towards the top of the range, simply because the UK pool of qualified translators is smaller.
Turnaround is normally the next working day. Against a hard deadline, same day translation is often possible for a single passport page, subject to capacity on the day, so it's worth a phone call rather than an email. Wider context, including per-word rates for longer documents, is on our pricing page. A driving licence translation is priced the same way, per page with certification included, if you've been asked for both.
UK bodies accept our certified format as it stands. Overseas authorities sometimes want more, typically a notarised translation, occasionally with an apostille on top. We don't arrange notarisation or apostille ourselves; what we do is prepare the certified translation in exactly the form your notary public needs, so the notarial step is quick. Our notarised translation page explains how the two fit together. Tell us which country and organisation will receive the document and we'll flag what to prepare for before you order. Everything else we translate, from contracts to medical records, lives on the translation services page.
Photograph the photo page, send it over, and a project manager will reply within one working hour during office hours. If you don't need a translation, we'll tell you that too.