Fees lost in translation

All UK marriage or birth certificates have standard field and column headers.

Those parts of the translation document are almost always identical.

The variables are dates, addresses and names, which in most cases cannot be translated so, apart from the “Official translator” stamp, we are paying for a copy of a previously translated certificate with the addition of appropriate UK addresses, names etc.

Hardly heavy work, copying something that has been copied many times before!

I have no objection to paying for these specialists for documents that don’t have such standard formats, but for birth and marriage certificates, charges appear excessive.

Barry Moffat, by email