Birth certificates are hugely important. Birth certificates are used by a lot of countries to determine a person’s rights to things such as residency, citizenship, healthcare, schooling and even parental rights. Without a birth certificate, a person could find themselves in a lot of legal trouble.
This is why birth certificates are often required by the authorities when you ask for residence in a country or even when you want to have your passport issued. They are essential when determining your rights. This means that very often, if you wish to reside abroad or, for example, you were born in a different country to your country of citizenship, you will need to have your birth certificate translated by a certified or sworn translator. This is one of the steps that many people seeking resident status in Spain must take to obtain residence.
Birth certificates act I:
Birth certificates come in all shapes and forms. In Spain for instance, only copies of birth certificates are ever issued by the authorities. This can be in the form of complete full copies of the original birth entry, which is held at the local registry office, or extracts of the same. This differs to the system in place in other countries which will issue “originals”. To these, in Europe, we must also add multilingual copies of birth certificates. These are widespread nowadays and usually allow the bearer to use the birth certificate, without needing to have it translated, in all countries of the European Union. However, in my experience, this is sometimes not considered enough and you are sometimes required to present the “original” copy of the birth certificate. You should keep that in mind, if you are on a tight schedule, to avoid having to find a sworn translator at the very last minute.
I hope you have found this article interesting. Maybe it has helped you to better understand what is needed when translating, or in this case also acquiring, these types of documents. Here at the CBlingua Malaga Translation Agency we like to keep people informed and that’s why we publish articles regularly on different translation and sworn translation related topics. Keep browsing this website or any of our other websites to know more.
If you need to have a sworn or certified translation, or even just a standard translation, done or you have any queries, please write to us at info@cblingua.com