Google Translate or ChatGPT for official documents?

Can I use Google Translate or ChatGPT for official documents?

Google Translate and ChatGPT are fine for reading, not for handing in. Use one to understand a document you cannot read, or to check what a letter says. For a visa, licence or skills assessment, the rules we quote name a person, not a tool.

Home Affairs: “All documents not in English must be translated into English. Translators in Australia must be accredited by the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters.” A tool has no NAATI credential, no name to sign and no telephone number anyone can ring.

Other authorities follow the same pattern. VicRoads names “any NAATI accredited translator or the country’s consulate in Australia”. Engineers Australia wants “the translator’s registered ID, name and contact details on each copy.” The Australian Computer Society says “it must be possible for ACS to contact the translator to verify the document”.

What Home Affairs says about machine translation

The Department of Home Affairs publishes language services guidelines for government agencies. They are written for agencies, not applicants, but they show plainly how the department sees these tools.

“Machine translation applications (such as Google Translate and Microsoft Translator) are freely and readily available through web browsers. Members of the public may use these tools to translate information on government web pages. However, such a ‘self-service’ approach, in which there is no quality assurance process to validate the translation, is likely to result in translated information that is unclear and potentially misleading.”

On why: “Machines cannot understand the broader cultural and intercultural context of a document, and cannot ask questions of its author to clarify its meaning and purpose in order to provide a fit-for-purpose translation.” And on forms the public sends in another language: “Agencies should not rely on machine translation of these forms”.

What NAATI says

NAATI certifies translators in Australia. Its position statement on AI sets the line: “NAATI believes that human translators and interpreters should remain at the core of intercultural communication and that AI should not be used in high-risk assignments without the expert supervision of a certified practitioner.”

It is blunt about free tools: they “do not guarantee the accuracy or appropriateness of the translated content nor the security of the input data. They do not bear the risk for the end-user.”

And it gives a warning that matters most when you cannot read the result yourself: “If used without understanding both languages, the translation they provide may seem accurate – however, this may not be the case.” On a visa, a licence transfer or a skills assessment, one wrong date of birth or a name in the wrong order is the kind of error that costs weeks.

Where your document goes when you upload it

A passport page or birth certificate holds most of what someone would need to pretend to be you. Of free AI tools, NAATI says: “The input data will be used to train and improve the AI model.” Whether that is true of a particular tool depends on the tool and its settings, so read its terms before you upload an identity document.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, writing for organisations, recommends as best practice “that organisations do not enter personal information, and particularly sensitive information, into publicly available generative AI tools”. That advice is not addressed to you as an individual. It is still a sensible bar for your own passport.

How we handle the photos you send us is on your documents.

Where AI tools genuinely help

Reading. A letter from a bank, a school report or an email from family: a machine translation tells you roughly what it says, and that is often all you need.

Checking before you pay. If you are not sure whether a page is a degree certificate or a transcript, a quick machine translation helps you work out what to order, and what to ask the authority.

Writing to an authority. Drafting an email in English is fine. Check every fact in it yourself before you send it.

What a translator adds that a tool cannot

A NAATI-certified translator reads the whole document, including stamps, seals and handwriting. They mark what cannot be read instead of guessing, and they sign a statement that the translation is theirs. Under our NAATI certification option, the translator’s name and practitioner number are on every page, with their NAATI stamp. What a certified translation looks like walks through it. The option itself is set out on our NAATI translation page.

If a person at home already translated your document, it may meet the checklist without paying anyone again: see can you translate your own documents? If you are eligible, the government’s Free Translating Service is the first place to look.

If you do order from us for a document you will hand in, choose the NAATI certification option; the full price in Australian dollars is on screen before you pay, and the translation arrives by email as a searchable PDF.

Sources, checked on the date shown:

Google Translate, ChatGPT and your official documents