What we will not promise
We are not a sworn translator of another country
An appointment made by one state, to one named person. It is not a thing anybody here can give themselves.
What you will see advertised
“Our sworn translations are official throughout Europe and Latin America.”
Two words are carrying that sentence — “sworn” and “throughout” — and neither is something a company on this side of the Atlantic is in any position to say about itself.
What sworn status actually is
Sworn or official status is conferred on a named individual by a particular state, under that state's own procedure. Nobody in New York holds it by virtue of being here, and no American certificate is a substitute for it where a country requires one.
It is an appointment: held by a named individual, granted by one state, under that state's own procedure. Being competent does not confer it, being experienced does not confer it, and being busy in the same language pair for twenty years does not confer it.
Three real appointments, and what makes the stamp worth anything
It is worth naming a few of them, because seeing the actual mechanism is what makes the advertisement above look like what it is.
Spain appoints a traductor-intérprete jurado through its foreign ministry, which keeps the register and issues the stamp. France appoints a traducteur assermenté through a court of appeal. Mexico authorises a perito traductor through a state court, and the authorisation is good in that state. Each of these is a real appointment with a real process behind it, and the whole value of the stamp is that it cannot be given to yourself. A company here that describes its own certificate as sworn is not making a small terminological slip; it is describing an appointment it does not have.
What we do instead
Where the destination requires an appointed translator, we find one in that country, confirm the appointment is current, brief them and manage the work — and where a plain certified translation from here would have been accepted, which is more often than people are told, we say so and it costs you less.
Notice which way round the incentives run. The expensive answer is the one a supplier has an interest in giving, so the first question is not how to obtain an appointed translator but whether the receiving office has actually asked for one — and that question is free to ask.
The other nine
One argument in ten parts. Each one is a sentence this trade sells and a plainer thing that is true instead.
Send us the document
A photograph is enough to quote from, and you will hear what the problem is — if there is one — before anybody starts work rather than afterwards.