How long a translation actually takes, and why

The arithmetic, before the exceptions

A translator working on continuous prose gets through roughly 2,200 words in a working day. That figure is deliberately conservative — an office that quotes its best case gets to apologise on the day of the deadline — and it is the number the estimator on this site divides by.

Add one day where a second translator is reading the work before it goes out. On anything certified that second reading is not an option and is not an extra: every certified document is read again before the certificate is signed, and the time for it is already in the quoted date.

Most single records are back with you in two working days. A birth certificate, a marriage certificate, a police record, a diploma: two working days is the ordinary answer, and it is two rather than one because the second reading, the formatting and the certificate are real work with a person's name attached to them.

Beyond a single record the count is roughly four pages a working day on top of that base, where a page is 250 words rather than a sheet of paper. So a four-page transcript is not four times the wait of a one-page certificate; it is the base plus a day.

When the clock actually starts

Working days, starting the working day after we have a legible copy of everything. Public holidays are not working days and neither is the Saturday morning the counter is open.

The words that carry the weight there are legible and everything. A file that arrives late in the afternoon starts the next working day. A file that arrives complete except for the reverse of one sheet does not start at all until the reverse arrives, and the commonest reason a job quoted at two working days takes a week is that most of the week was spent waiting for a photograph of the back of a certificate.

Which is why the quote and the date are sent after somebody has read the actual document rather than before. If there is a problem — the wrong version, a missing page, something unreadable — that is when you hear about it.

What rush pricing buys

Speed is a multiplier on the translation and on nothing else. It never applies to a notary's fee and it never applies to an authority's, because those are not ours to compress.

• Standard. What most work runs at. The dates are working days and they start when we have the document, not when you ask.
• Next working day: half as much again. Somebody's evening, in practice. Available on records and on short files; on a long file it means splitting it between translators, which we will tell you before we do it.
• Same day: twice the rate. Only on records, only where the document is with us before eleven in the morning, and only where somebody is free. We say no to this more often than we say yes, and saying no in the morning is more use to you than saying yes and missing it.

What you are buying with either of those is somebody's evening, or a long file split between translators — which is something you are told before it is done rather than after. It is a real cost and it is priced as one. What you are not buying is a different quality of work, and that is worth saying plainly: the reading, the second reading and the certificate happen at the same standard on a rushed job, which is precisely why the rushed job costs more rather than less.

And the part nobody can compress

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.

This is the step that most often decides whether a deadline is met, and it is the one no supplier controls. The estimator on this site counts five working days for the authenticating authority's own step, which is an allowance rather than a promise — the authority works to its own timetable. Getting the document into the form that authority accepts is where most of these fail, and it is most of what the handling fee is for.

We do not issue the apostille and cannot; the authority does, on its own timetable

Consular legalisation, where the destination is outside the Hague Convention, is longer again and is set entirely by that country's consulate.

Two things that will cost you a week if you get them wrong

A document that expires while it waits. Most of them are only accepted for a few months from issue, and the clock runs from the date the police issued it rather than the date you had it translated. If yours is close to the edge, get the new one before the translation rather than after.

Paper, decided late. A PDF goes out the working day it is finished. A signed hard copy goes in the post, and the post is a day or three that nobody counts until it is running out. Deciding at the start that you want paper costs nothing; deciding it at the end costs the whole of the postal time over again.

How to buy yourself the most time

Send it early, send all of it, and say what the deadline is. The deadline is not used to charge you more — it is used to say no in time for you to do something else. A no on a short document at eleven in the morning is a genuinely useful answer; the same no at the end of the day is not, which is why same-day work is only taken on documents that reach the office in the morning.

The estimator on this site gives a date as well as a figure for whatever you describe, and it counts in working days from the day after everything legible is in. If that date is later than the one you need, the useful next question is not whether it can be done faster, but which of the steps in it you do not actually need — and quite often the answer is the notarial signature, the paper copy, or both.