Before you order
Do you need a translation if your document is already in English?
Sometimes you do not, and finding that out costs nothing. Two situations raise the question: a certificate or card that is only part English, and the European multilingual forms that print the same fields in several languages at once.
Does your document need an English translation?
Answer a few quick questions and get your answer in 1 second.
Partly in English
Where the English on your document stops
Few official documents are entirely in one language. These are common mixed formats, and the part of each a reader here cannot use.
English labels, local-language values
Cards and licences printed for travel label the fields in English — surname, date of birth, class — while the values stay in the issuing language. The reader knows what the box is for, not what is in it. See the licence translation page.
Two columns, two languages
Some registries issue a certificate in parallel columns. Read both before assuming they match: the English side is often shorter, and anything added later, an amendment or a correction, sits on the local side only.
An English stamp on a form that is not
A legalisation note, apostille or consular stamp added in English after issue. It says the document is genuine, which is a different claim from saying what the document contains.
English on the face, not in the margins
A short English summary can sit beside a full record and leave out the detail a reader checks. Seal text, registry notes and annotations stay in the local language, often on the reverse. Our birth certificate and marriage certificate pages list what matters.
Not sure which you have? Tell us before you order what the document is and what English is already on it, and we will say whether anything needs translating.
Alphabet and language
Familiar letters, unfamiliar language
A Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Indonesian or Vietnamese document is printed in letters an Australian reader recognises. Recognising the letters is not reading the page. Nobody at a counter asks which alphabet a document uses; they ask whether it is in English, and a page of Polish is not.
Familiar letters mislead in a way an unfamiliar script cannot. Someone who cannot read a word knows to ask; someone who half recognises one guesses, and a guess about a vehicle class or a marital status surfaces later. Dates are the clearest case, as dates and calendars on a translation sets out.
Multilingual forms
EU multilingual standard forms and CIEC extracts
Several European countries issue civil-status records in a form built to be read across borders: numbered boxes with the same short labels repeated in column after column. English is usually among the languages; your own details stay in the issuing one.
| What it is called | What it actually is |
|---|---|
| EU multilingual standard form | An annex issued with a national certificate under the European Union rules on public documents moving between member states. It repeats the certificate’s numbered fields with labels in several European languages, and travels with the certificate rather than replacing it. |
| CIEC or ICCS multilingual extract | Older, and the certificate itself rather than an attachment. Some European countries issue birth, marriage and death extracts on a pre-printed multilingual form agreed between them, under the civil-status conventions their registries work to. |
| What it is not | Not a certified translation. Nobody signed it as one; it carries no certification statement and no translator’s stamp. |
Using one instead of a translation? We have not verified how departments, registries or companies here treat them. Ring whoever asked for the document and ask.
What we do with it
How a certified translation handles a bilingual document
What a translator signs is the whole of what you send, not a selection from it. That decides two things: what happens to the English already on your page, and how the page is counted.
The translator works down the page in the order it is printed. Wording already in English is carried over untouched; everything else is turned into English, following the layout as closely as a translation can, so the two versions can be compared box by box. On a bilingual document both columns come through, and now and then that reveals they do not quite agree — better found here than at a counter.
Counting follows the same logic. Any side with writing, a stamp or a seal on it is a page at $39.99, whether it is half English or none at all; the certified option costs a further $59.99 on each such side, because a practitioner signs and stamps every one. Four pages is the most the order page will handle in one go.
Normal delivery costs nothing extra, with an estimate of within 3 days; $49 shortens the estimate to 12–24 hours, and $99 to within 4 hours when a translator is free. We do not deliver on Sundays: a delivery that would fall on a Sunday arrives on the Monday. Either surcharge is paid once on the order, not on each page. What a NAATI translation is, and what it costs sets the certified option out in full.
Before you pay
The cost of translating something that did not need translating
Once the translation has started, the work has been done. Three free checks come first, each quicker than the order.
Ask the office that will read it
Name the document, say which parts are already in English, and ask whether a translation is wanted.
Check whether it is free for you
TIS National says “Permanent residents and eligible visa holders can get up to 10 personal documents translated into English for free.” If that describes you, take it; the free translating service sets out the tests.
Source: TIS National, About the Free Translating Service (checked 13 September 2026)
Check that we are the right supplier
There are jobs we turn away rather than take payment for. When we will tell you not to order lists them; the services page answers fifty more questions.
Still not sure there is anything to translate? Send an enquiry, or a photo of the page to support@officialtranslation.com.au. We will tell you what we would translate, including if the answer is nothing.
Common questions
Questions about documents that are already partly in English
Yes, by comparison with the original. The translation follows its layout as closely as a translation can: wording already in English is kept as printed, and everything else appears in English in the same order, so the two can be compared field by field and the English parts found at a glance. Anything illegible is marked, not guessed at. What a certified translation looks like shows the layout.
Not on a certified translation. What the translator signs has to match the document in your hand, and a page with one column missing is not that document, so the whole side is rendered even where half of it needs no work. If you only want the gist of one part for yourself, say so in an enquiry and we will say whether ordering is worth it.
No. It prints numbered fields and their labels in several languages so a reader abroad can find each one without knowing the language, but no translator has certified it and it carries no stamp. We have not verified how Australian departments or registries treat these forms. Ask the body that wants the document, then send us a photo of the page.
It depends what the stamp says. An apostille or legalisation note in English confirms that a document or a signature is genuine; it does not put the contents into English. If the fields and the seal text are in the issuing language, there is still something to translate, and our official document translation page covers paperwork of that kind.
Ask the office first, then ask us. Describe the English already on the page to the body that asked for the document, and ask whether a translation is wanted. Whether you need a NAATI translation at all takes the same question from the other side.