translation advice please

[drak]

Hello folks, maybe someone can answer a question we have:  I am a Canadian citizen living in belgium with my Dutch partner - we are getting all our documents together and we are trying to understand the translation requirements.    Are there different levels of official translations?  For instance, do we need the same level of translation for a letter from her father describing our relationship as for her police "good conduct" certificate?   And how about our rental agreement?

I will ask the consulate tomorrow, just wondering what you people out there have experienced.   Thanks very much for all replies!!

[Panda]

Any documents that you are submitting with your application should be translated to english ( if in any other language )

[canadianwoman]

You are supposed to use a certified translator. For official documents, I would use a certified translator. Because of the expense, for other things such as proof of a genuine relationship (emails, chat logs, letters) I would not use a certified translator, I would just do it myself or have a family member or friend do it (unless your "region specific" forms tell you you cannot translate things yourself). Other people on this forum have done it this way, and have reported no problems.
As well, everything has to be translated into English or French, so if anything you have already has French on it, you don't need to translate it.

[AlieW]

We did a certified translation of the neccessary official docs (his military record, the birth certificate, and the police check (ours goes straight to the VO but if not I would do it as well) and also a few of the key pieces of evidence of our common-law relationship (joint rental agreements, identity documents with the same address). We spent quite a bit of time getting the banks, insurance companies, phone companies, ect to write us letters, or issue statements in English. So that we didn't have to translate those. Most were more then happy to do so and didn't charge us (we felt this was more official then having friends translate the documents and not as expensive as having them certified). As we applied Common-Law we had to send them a lot of additional evidence proving the common-law status of our relationship.

We were also picky and had our friends/family write letters describing our relationship in english - or as some of our friends understand (read and speak) english well but don't write well, we had a third party help them write the letters. (His parents don't speak or understand english so we didn't include a letter from them).

All our written chat was in english - and the few emails that weren't we didn't include - but the consensus so far is with the chats/emails you (or a friend) can translate it.

I don't think there is any hard an fast rule - I assume if you submit something and you translated the document yourself, or had a friend do it and the VO wants a certified copy they will ask you to send them another copy that has been certified.

[cuds]

"Support letters" from family/friends were translated by us and the Dutch copy was attached to the translated English copy, both the Dutch and English was signed by who wrote the letter and we copied from our Dutch friends/family their identity cards and attached those to the letter as well. Just so Visa Office Paris would see we are not making support letters ourselves.

We did not translate rent agreements, but highlighted the dates and price.


In case you mean by Dutch, Belgian and not Holland;
As far as the criminal record check paper(no idea how else to call it?!). You can ask that in French (oh the joys of both countries having English and French as official languages) and you'll have it within a few days. You email, they send a paper copy in the mail. I can look up the email address of the person I emailed about this if you'd like. Doesn't cost you anything.

In Belgium you can also get an international birth certificate. Just ask at the town council. This is also free.

As a matter of fact, I did not pay for any translation or documents in Belgium.

Also something I did ... I went to the town council/gemeentehuis and let them validate a lot of copies for me. Examples; copy of passport, copy of birth certificate, copy of proof of nationality, copy of degree, copy of identity card, copy of drivers license, copy of criminal record, ... Even the things I didn't really need, it looks so much better with an official stamp and autograph on it I had (and still have) a ton of copies from everything possible, they knew me after a while at the town council lol. All for free of course