What Happens After You Upload a Document

Your PDF is measured the moment it lands, and the word count, the page count and the price for each service level appear on screen. You choose your language pair and your service level, pay by card, and the order goes to a certified translator qualified in that pair. When the translation is finished it is checked line by line against your original, signed, and delivered to your account as a ready to submit PDF with a signed certificate of accuracy on the cover.

Step one, your document is measured and priced

Nothing is estimated. The text in the PDF you upload is counted, and that count decides the number of pages, where one page is up to 250 words. A 180 word birth certificate is one page. A 900 word transcript is four. The counting rules, including how partial pages round, are set out in what counts as one page in translation pricing.

The price for all three service levels is then shown against your real page count, so you are comparing actual totals rather than rates. One page comes to $19.95 at Standard, $24.95 at Certified and $39.95 at Premium. A single order holds up to 50 pages.

Upload the complete document, every side of every page, at the best quality you have. A clean scan is read cleanly. If a page is too faint for the text to be read with confidence, or a back page with text on it is missing, we come back to you before any work begins rather than guessing.

Step two, you choose the pair and the level

You pick the source language and the target language from the eight we work in, which are English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch and Turkish, with every combination between them. Only pairs that have a qualified certified translator available can be ordered, which is why the languages page is short and honest rather than a long list of pairs nobody could actually staff.

Then you choose the service level. Certified at $24.95 per page includes the signed certificate of accuracy and is what agencies, courts, universities and licensing boards ask for. Premium at $39.95 is the same certified translation moved to the front of the schedule and delivered in one to two business days. Standard at $19.95 is a translation without certification, for documents that need to be accurate but do not need to be certified.

Step three, payment and confirmation

Payment is by card, and the amount charged is the total you saw before you entered it. Your turnaround starts once the payment clears, counted in business days, so a Certified order confirmed on a Friday afternoon is due back on the Tuesday or Wednesday of the following week. There is more on planning around a deadline in how long a certified translation takes.

From that point the order is visible in your account with its status, so you are not left wondering whether anything is happening.

Step four, a certified translator translates it

Your order is assigned to a qualified certified translator who works in your exact language pair and is familiar with the type of document you have sent. Vital records, academic records, court documents and contracts each carry their own conventions, and the wrong convention is how a translation ends up rejected on a technicality.

The translator keeps the structure of the original. Tables stay tables, headings stay in place, and stamps, seals and signature blocks are rendered where they appear on the page. Names, dates, registry numbers and reference codes are carried across exactly. When a reviewer sets the translation next to your original, the two should read as the same document in two languages.

Step five, review and certification

The finished translation is checked against your original line by line before anything is issued. This is a full review pass, not a glance, and it is where anything transposed or omitted gets caught.

Only then is the translation certified. It is issued on our official certified template with a signed certificate of accuracy carrying the translator's name, signature, the date and the language pair, attesting that the translation is complete and accurate. Certification happens after a translator has approved the work, never before, and never without one. The four steps are also summarized on the how it works page.

What is in the file you receive

Delivery is digital and lands in your account. The file is a single PDF containing the signed certificate of accuracy and the full translation, formatted for submission.

• Download it whenever you need it, from any device where you can sign in
• Print as many copies as the filing requires, at no additional cost
• Attach it to an online filing, or send the printed version by mail if the receiving office wants paper

What any particular office requires is set by that office. Agencies, courts and universities each publish their own instructions, and those instructions are the ones that govern your filing. We prepare the certified translation to the standard those instructions describe.

How a recipient checks the certificate is genuine

Every certified translation we issue can be checked. The office receiving the document can confirm the certificate on our verification page without needing an account or contacting you. It exists because a certificate that cannot be checked is only worth the paper it is printed on, and because it protects you against anyone passing off a forged version of a real document.

If you sent the wrong file or picked the wrong pair

It happens, most often the wrong direction of the pair or an old scan rather than the current one. Tell us as soon as you notice through the contact page. If the translation has not started, sorting it out is straightforward. Once a translator is working, there is less room to change things without affecting the delivery date, so speed matters more than the apology.

If the receiving office rejects your translation

If a certified translation is rejected because of a translation error we made, we correct it at no charge. If the corrected translation is rejected again for that same error, we refund what you paid for it. We need notice within 30 days and a copy of the written rejection, and the refund policy sets out the conditions and what it does not cover. Keep the rejection notice, since it tells us exactly what to fix.

When you are ready, upload your PDF at start an order. You will see the page count, the price and the delivery window before you pay for anything.