The counter
Where documents are handed over and collected, and where most of the questions get asked. There is a scanner on it, so if you have brought the only copy of something you can walk out with it the same minute.
The office
Inside the office
Everything here happens on one floor, in four rooms, and most of what this office does for you never requires you to see any of them.
The translators' room
Five desks, a wall of dictionaries nobody has thrown out, and the reference shelf of registry forms that tells you what a document from a particular country in a particular decade is supposed to look like.
The signing table
Where certificates are signed and where a notarial signature is witnessed when a document needs one. It is a table by a window rather than anything grander, and it is the last place a document is looked at before it goes out.
The interpreting booth
One booth, used for remote assignments and for training. Conference work happens at the venue, with equipment hired for the day; this is where somebody sits for a two-hour video hearing without a dog barking in the background.
When the counter is open
Thursday runs late because that is the evening people come after work with a folder of records, and Saturday morning is the busiest two hours of the week. You do not need an appointment to drop a document off or to collect one, and most of what we do never requires anybody to come in at all.
Being dealt with in your own language
At the counter, on most days, somebody can deal with you in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Polish, Romanian. That is a different and much shorter list than the twenty-four languages this office translates, and the difference is the point: the first is who happens to be behind the desk, the second is a panel that is arranged.
- English
- Spanish
- Portuguese
- French
- Polish
- Romanian
Getting in
The door is level with the pavement, the counter has a lowered section at seated height, and there is no lift because there is no upstairs. The accessibility page is measurements rather than adjectives, including the things that are not step-free.
- Accessibility — measurements, and the parts that are a barrier
- Getting here — the trains, the buses and the parking
- How a job runs — the five steps, from sending it to getting it back
- How these pictures were made — why nothing in any photograph here can be read
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.