With around 60,000 Britons marrying abroad each year, it's not surprising that we are asked to provide marriage certificate translations on an almost daily basis. We frequently receive enquiries regarding the translation of Greek marriage certificates which, thanks to the fact that they are handwritten, aren’t always straightforward. To give you an idea of the translation process we’ve written a blog based on the experience of a recent client (all names have been changed for confidentiality of course).

Katie and her husband were married on the Greek island of Santorini and needed a certified translation of their marriage certificate in order for Katie to change the name on her bank account, passport and driving licence. Katie uploaded a scan of the marriage certificate to our website explaining that a certified translation was required urgently as she needed to change the name on her passport before going on holiday next month. Our project manager was able to get back to her with a quote in a couple of hours detailing the cost of the translation, the payment methods and the delivery options.

Katie chose to pay for her translation by debit card over the phone as it’s quick and easy and there are no administration charges. In addition to the card details we needed the billing address of the card and a delivery address for the translation. Katie opted for Special Delivery for an extra £6 to ensure that she received the translation as soon as possible, so we arranged to post the translation to her work address so that she would be there to sign for it.

Once payment had been taken, we proceeded with the translation which was then checked in house by two experienced proofreaders before sending an electronic version to Katie for her and her husband’s approval. The handwriting on the certificate had been difficult to decipher and, as the names are transliterated from the Greek alphabet, spelling variations can occur (i.e. Katy instead of Katie). Katie was able to provide the correct spellings of the names where there were errors in the transliteration.

The names of the bride and groom are normally also written in English. Occasionally, the names are spelt incorrectly on the original Greek certificate, although this isn’t normally a problem. If there is an error on the original certificate we will mark this as [sic] and provide correct information on the declaration which forms part of the certified translation.

As is often the case with Greek marriage certificates, there were also several incomplete fields on the original which meant that this appeared on the translation as well, for example ‘Katie James, resident at…… town of……’ Although Katie was able to provide the missing information, we were not able to include it in the translation as this would not have been a faithful translation of the document. This is often happens with Greek marriage certificates and causes no problem with the translation at all. Similarly, where this information was filled in, but was impossible to decipher, we had to enter [illegible text] in the translation. Even though Katie was able to decipher what is written on the original, we still had to leave them as 'illegible' on the translation. This is because, on the copies we had, it was not possible to make out the wording with any certainty, and we had to translate using only the copies we had.

We changed the spellings of the names accordingly and emailed Katie the amended version for her final approval. Once Katie had replied to say she was happy with the changes, we issued the certified translation and had it in the Special Delivery post that afternoon.

The entire translation process for a certified translation takes around 3-4 working days, but we will do our best to accommodate urgent deadlines where possible. If you’d like to request a free quote for a certified translation, give us a ring on +44 (0) 114 266 1103 or email us at transaction@transaction.co.uk.