When somebody official has to accept it
Certified translation
A complete translation with a signed certificate of accuracy attached to it.
By the page, from the rate card.
When somebody official has to accept it
Apostille and legalisation
We prepare it and lodge it. A Secretary of State issues it.
An apostille is a certificate issued under the Hague Convention that authenticates a signature and seal so a document is accepted in another member country without further steps. It is issued by a designated authority — for a New York notarial act, the New York Secretary of State; for a federal document, the United States Department of State — and by nobody else. What this office does is get the document into the form the authority requires, lodge it, follow it and bring it back to you. Where the destination country is not a Hague member the equivalent is consular legalisation, which is longer and involves that country's consulate.
How the days are counted. Working days, starting the working day after we have a legible copy of everything. Where an authority is involved, its own time is added and is not ours to compress — that step is the one that most often decides whether a deadline is met.
The two lists
What you are buying, and what you are not
The second column is the more useful of the two. Most of what goes wrong in this trade is somebody paying for a thing they believed they were getting and were never told they were not.
What this includes
- Checking that the destination country actually takes an apostille, before anything is lodged
- Getting the document into the form the authority will accept, which is where most of these fail
- Lodging it, tracking it, and chasing it when it stops moving
- The document back to you by post or courier, with the apostille attached rather than loose
- The authority's own fee passed on at what it costs and not marked up
What this is not
- We do not issue the apostille and cannot; the authority does, on its own timetable
- An apostille authenticates a signature and a seal — it says nothing whatever about whether the content of a document is true
- It cannot be put on a document the authority does not recognise, and we will tell you that before you pay rather than after
What it costs
A handling fee, plus the authority's own fee at cost.
Certified work is priced by the page rather than by the sheet, which is why two documents of the same physical size are quoted differently — the caption under the table gives the count. The group your language falls into is the only other thing that moves the figure, and the table says why each group costs what it does rather than asking you to take it on trust.
| Group | Why it costs what it does | A page |
|---|---|---|
| Group one | The largest pools of translators in this city, and the pairs we can usually staff the same morning. | $32 |
| Group two | A working panel rather than a queue of candidates — a day or two of notice makes a difference to who takes it. | $38 |
| Group three | A handful of people we trust in the pair, most of them working somewhere else at the time. The rate is what it costs to reach them, not a judgement about the language. | $46 |
And the act that is not translation
Two tables, because two different things are being bought. The first is the translation, priced by the page. The second is the acts that go around it — and what is charged there is for getting a document through the sequence, with an authority’s own fee passed on at what it costs rather than marked up.
| Item | What it is | Fee |
|---|---|---|
| Certificate of accuracy | The signed statement that goes with every certified translation: who translated it, that they are competent in both languages, and that the translation is complete and accurate. It is included in the page rate and never charged for separately, because a certified translation without it is not one. | Included |
| Notarised signature | A notary public commissioned by the State of New York watches the translator sign the certificate, checks their identification, and completes a notarial certificate. What the notary attests is who signed. No notary in this country attests that a translation is correct. | $25 |
| Apostille handling | Preparing the notarised document for authentication, lodging it with the authority, tracking it and getting it back to you. The apostille itself is issued by a Secretary of State under the Hague Convention and by nobody else. The authority's own fee is passed on at what it costs. | $95 |
| Signed hard copy, posted | The signed and sealed original in the post, first class. Most filings take a PDF now and the PDF is included in the price; some consulates still want paper and will say so. | $15 |
| Each further hard copy | Signed and sealed the same as the first. Worth ordering one more than you think you need: an office that keeps your copy does not give it back. | $10 |
| Overnight courier | Tracked, next working day, where the post is not fast enough for a deadline. | $28 |
Straight talk
Where this is bounded
These straight answers bear directly on the work above: We do not issue the apostille and Nobody can guarantee that your document will be accepted. The rest of the ten are below — they are one argument in ten parts and each links to the others.
When somebody official has to accept it
The rest of this half of the office
Sorted by who is going to read the result, which is the only question that changes what the work has to be.
When somebody official has to accept it
Notarised translation
A notary public watches the translator sign, and attests who signed.
The page rate plus the notarial fee.
When somebody official has to accept it
Sworn and official translation abroad
For countries where the state appoints the translator by name.
Quoted case by case, because the appointed translator sets it.
Send us the document
A photograph is enough to quote from. Or work out the figure yourself first — the estimator shows its arithmetic rather than only its answer.