Guide

What is a NAATI certified translation?

“NAATI certified translation” is the everyday name for a translation prepared by a translator with a current NAATI credential for that language direction. It carries their certification statement, name, practitioner number and NAATI stamp. NAATI certifies the translator, not the paper, and that distinction matters most when someone tells you your translation has expired.

Published 11 September 2026 · Official Translation

Does your document need an English translation?

Answer a few quick questions and get your answer in 1 second.

Check your document

The short answer: the credential belongs to the translator

NAATI is the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters, and it describes itself as Australia’s national standards and certifying authority for translators and interpreters. It tests people, credentials them, and keeps a public record of who currently holds what. It never sees your document, and it does not approve, register or certify individual translations.

So when a website offers you a “NAATI certified translation”, the accurate version is: a translation prepared by a NAATI-certified translator, who signs a statement that the English is a true and complete rendering of your original and stamps it with their own credential. The certification is the person’s. The translation is theirs to stand behind.

This is not pedantry. It is the reason a stamp on its own proves very little, the reason the date printed on that stamp is not what most people think it is, and the reason the only useful question to ask a provider is who is doing the translating. With NAATI translation, ordered online from us, the PDF names the translator.

What you actually receive

A PDF, usually two parts to it. First the translation itself, laid out to follow your original as closely as it can, so that an officer can hold them side by side and see that every field, stamp, seal and handwritten note has been translated or marked in square brackets. Then the translator’s certification statement, with their name, their practitioner number and their stamp.

A practitioner number is nine characters and always begins with CPN. It identifies one human being, and it is what lets anybody — you, or the office you hand the translation to — check that the person was certified in the right language and direction when they did the work.

We have set out the whole thing page by page, including what the statement has to say and what a translated stamp or seal looks like, in what a certified translation looks like.

Two credentials, and which one your translator holds

NAATI awards translators one of two credentials. Certified Translator is the test-based credential: the person sat and passed NAATI’s examination in that language pair and direction. Recognised Practising Translator is awarded where NAATI has no test available in the language pair, and it recognises demonstrated training and current, continuing work in the field.

The two are not equal, and NAATI says so itself: Recognised Practising credentials “do not have equal status with certification”, they do not “stipulate a specific level of transfer competency”, and once NAATI starts testing a language the credential cannot be renewed. It exists because no examiner panel exists for every one of the world’s languages, and a language without a NAATI test still has documents that need translating. So for a language NAATI tests, the certified option is prepared by a Certified Translator, and the person who stamps your translation has passed NAATI’s test in your direction.

For a language NAATI does not test, a Recognised Practising Translator is the only NAATI credential there is (NAATI’s own FAQ says government agencies require NAATI certification “if they are available in the relevant language”), and it is what we use; the certification statement and the stamp say which credential your translator holds, and our terms say the same. What matters just as much is that the credential is current and covers the direction you need — a translator certified from English into Spanish is not automatically certified from Spanish into English.

Direction is an easy detail to miss, so check it.

The date on the stamp is not an expiry date

This is an easy misunderstanding, and it can cost money. NAATI credentials run for three years, and a translator must recertify to keep theirs. The stamp carries a “valid to” date, so a translation from two years ago can look, to a worried eye, as though it is about to run out.

It is not. NAATI puts it plainly: the expiry date on the translation stamp relates to the translator’s credential, not the validity of the translation. And in the same breath: a translation from a NAATI-credentialed translator should carry the date it was completed, and the translation remains valid indefinitely.

So a translation done properly in 2023 by a translator whose credential was live in 2023 does not stop being a valid translation in 2026. If an office ever tells you otherwise, the date they should be looking at is the completion date, and the credential they should be checking is the one that was current when the work was done.

That is NAATI’s position. If an office questions the date, point it to NAATI’s Practitioner Identification page and ask what it needs.

There is one honest caveat. Some offices ask for a recently issued document rather than a recent translation — a police certificate issued within the last six months, say. That is a rule about your original, not about the English. If your original is out of date, a new translation of it will not help you.

When you need one, and when you may not

NAATI’s own FAQ says: “Most government agencies in Australia require documents to be translated by someone who holds NAATI certification, if they are available in the relevant language.” Most is not all. A licence transfer in New South Wales, for one, takes translations only from four named organisations, and we are not among them. So ask the office first, and where its wording names NAATI, choose the NAATI option.

There are also situations where you may not need a translation at all. If you are here for a short stay and hold a current International Driving Permit issued with your overseas licence, most state and territory road authorities word the visitor rule as a permit or an English translation carried with the licence, so you may not need one for driving — Queensland is the one that names only a translation. We set out where that holds and where it does not in an IDP or a translation. And some organisations ask for a translation certified another way, or no certification at all.

Ask the office you are dealing with what they want, in writing if you can. We would rather tell you that you do not need us than sell you something you cannot use; there is a whole page on when we will tell you not to order.

Checking the one you already have

You do not have to trust any provider, including us. A NAATI digital stamp carries a QR code that opens NAATI’s own record of that stamp, and each code is unique — NAATI can disable an individual stamp if it is misused without touching the rest of that translator’s work. Separately, NAATI keeps a public directory where you can look up the practitioner number by hand.

Two minutes with a phone tells you whether the credential is real, whose it is, and whether it covered the direction of your translation. How to check a NAATI stamp and the translator behind it walks through both checks and explains what each result means.

Every translation we deliver with the NAATI option is prepared, certified and stamped by the NAATI-certified translator who did the work — their name and practitioner number are on it, and you are free to check both. See the price and order.

Sources, checked on the date shown: