Spain’s sworn translator system
Establish this before spending anything. Spain maintains a register of traductores jurados — translators appointed by its Ministry of Foreign Affairs and authorised to certify translations for official use within Spain.
For many official purposes Spanish authorities require a translation by one of these appointed translators. A translation certified in India, however accurate, may not satisfy that requirement.
Ask the receiving body directly whether they accept a translation certified abroad with an apostilled original, or whether a sworn translator in Spain is required. Some accept the former, particularly for preliminary stages. Others do not. Where a sworn translator is required we will tell you so rather than sell you a document that will be refused — that means declining work, which is the correct outcome.
Latin American countries operate their own arrangements, and they differ from Spain’s and from each other. Mexico, Argentina and Colombia each have their own approach to official translation. Tell us the specific country rather than “Spanish”, because the answer changes.
The two-surname problem
Spanish civil registration is built around a naming convention in which a person carries two surnames, conventionally one from each parent. Forms, registers and databases are structured to expect both.
Indian documents rarely supply two surnames, and frequently supply something that does not map onto the structure at all — a single name, an initial standing for a father’s name, or a name recorded as an undifferentiated string.
A translation cannot manufacture a surname that does not exist, and inventing a second one to fit the form would be a false statement. We render the name exactly as the Indian document gives it and add a note explaining the naming convention where a Spanish registrar would otherwise conclude that information is missing.
This frequently resolves the difficulty, because the registrar’s problem is usually not the absence of a surname but the absence of an explanation.
Qualifications and equivalence
Indian qualifications are rendered as awarded. We do not translate a Bachelor of Technology into a Spanish equivalent, because determining equivalence is the function of the Spanish education authorities under their own homologation process.
A translator asserting equivalence has no standing with them and can only contradict their finding.
Apostille
Spain and most Latin American countries are Hague Convention members, so the apostille route applies rather than consular legalisation. In the usual case the Indian original is apostilled and the translation accompanies it — but where a sworn translator in Spain is required, the sequence may be that the apostilled original travels to Spain and is translated there.
Confirm the sequence with the receiving authority before starting. For this pair more than most, the order is what determines whether the work is usable.