Languages we cover
French translation
Where it is spoken, which variety you are holding, what the civil registry issues — and the decision in French that a translator has to take and defend with no right answer to look up.
Français
Where French is spoken, and which one you are holding
Three facts that decide who takes the work, before anybody has read a word of it.
Where it is spoken
France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, and much of West and Central Africa
Which variety
France, Quebec, Belgium and Switzerland use different words for the same civil act; an African francophone record often follows the French form of the year it was issued.
What the registry issues
Extrait d'acte de naissance, with or without filiation, and the two are not interchangeable for a filing.
The decision with no right answer
What goes wrong in French
There are twenty-four languages on this site and they are not twenty-four copies of one page with a different name at the top. This paragraph is the difference. It is a decision somebody has to take and then defend, in a document where a name has to match a passport, and there is nowhere to look the answer up.
A French civil extract is not a copy of the original entry — it is an extract written out afresh, with the marginal notes that record everything that happened to that person since. Those margins carry the divorce, the change of name and the death, and a translation that omits them because they are in the margin has omitted the point.
A translation office that never mentions any of that is not a translation office with fewer problems; it is one that has taken the same decision quietly. Written down, it is a thing you can disagree with before the document is filed rather than afterwards — and it is why a person signs the certificate of accuracy. Somebody took the decision, and their name is on the page where it was taken.
What it costs
French is in group one
The group decides the page rate and nothing else does. What puts a language in one group rather than another is who is available in this city to do the work and sign for it.
Group one $32 a page
The largest pools of translators in this city, and the pairs we can usually staff the same morning.
What a page means
A page on this rate card is 250 words rather than a sheet of paper, so a dense certificate can be two pages and a sparse one can be half of one. Continuous prose is priced by the word instead, at the rate for its discipline.
There is also a minimum charge of $60 on the translation, which a single short record will meet before anything else is added — said here rather than buried, because the page rate on its own would predict a cheaper answer than the invoice.
Where the figures come from
- The whole rate card — page rates, word rates, handling and speed
- Get an estimate — arithmetic on what you type, shown line by line
- How a job runs — what happens between sending and collecting
An estimate and a quote are different objects. An estimate is arithmetic on what you typed. It is not an offer, it does not bind anybody, and it will move if the document turns out to be longer, in worse condition or a different thing from what it was described as. The quote that follows somebody reading it is the one to rely on.
What arrives in it
French documents in this catalogue
The record named above is a civil record — one of the five groups this catalogue is arranged into. Every document type in it has a page saying what to send and what goes wrong with it.
Everything else
Academic records, identity documents, court files, contracts, statements and medical files all arrive in this language too, and they are priced from the same card. The catalogue is arranged by what the document is rather than by what it is for.
Before you rely on any of this
- What “certified” describes — the translation, not the translator
- Sworn status abroad — conferred by a foreign state on a named person
- What we will not promise — ten of them, each with its own page
The rest of group one
Same page rate, same reason for it, and each with a paragraph like the one above. Twenty-four languages have a standing panel here; seven more are arranged case by case and are named on the index.
All twenty-four languages, and the ones we arrange rather than staff
Send us the document
Send a photograph of the French document. It is quicker than describing it, and it is what a quote is worked out from.