Worked example
Transferring a Punjabi licence in Queensland, and the question to ask first
A new resident, a licence in Gurmukhi script, and a state that accepts three kinds of translation but is silent on one thing that matters. (Illustrative example. The people and the job are made up, to show how the published rules apply. It is not a customer story and not a testimonial.)
Published 4 September 2026 · Official Translation
Transferring your overseas licence?
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The situation
Take a family settling in Brisbane on a permanent visa. The father has driven for fifteen years on a licence issued in Punjab, an older one with its entries in Gurmukhi and only his name transliterated into English. Queensland’s page says you cannot keep driving on an overseas licence if you “were given a resident visa before you moved to Queensland and you’ve been living in Queensland for 3 months”, so he wants the transfer done inside that window.
Source: Queensland Government, driving on an overseas licence (last updated 19 February 2024)
What the rules say
Queensland’s transport department accepts a translation from three sources for a transfer: a NAATI translator, Multicultural NSW, or a consul-general. An independent NAATI-certified translator is squarely on that list, which is why we can help. What that involves is set out on our driver’s licence translation page. The consulate route carries a letterhead-and-stamp condition; the NAATI route does not.
There is one thing the state’s page does not say. It talks about documents being originals, not photocopies or certified copies, in a list that includes the translation. Whether a digitally delivered translation, printed by the customer, counts as an original for a counter transaction is not spelled out anywhere we could find. We are not going to guess at that on a customer’s behalf.
What we would do
We would tell him, before he paid, to ring Transport and Main Roads and ask one question: will you accept a printed copy of a NAATI-certified digital translation at the counter, or do you need an original hard copy from the translator? If they want a hard copy, we are not the right supplier and he should not order from us. We do not know what Transport and Main Roads will answer, and we will not guess.
The translation itself would be the usual full job: both sides, the Gurmukhi translated with the name matching his passport, the categories written out, the issuing authority named, the validity dates converted. Because Queensland names NAATI, the NAATI certification option is the one that matches its wording.
Why we tell this one
Because the honest answer to some questions is ask the authority, and a translation business that pretends otherwise is setting its customers up. Our Queensland page says the same thing in print. Where we are sure, we say so. Where the state is silent, we say that too.
The Queensland rules, quoted from the authority: licence translation for Queensland. Punjabi documents: Punjabi to English translation.