What a certified translation actually is
A certified translation is a translation accompanied by a signed statement — from the translator or the agency — declaring that it is a complete and accurate rendering of the original document. That statement carries a name, a signature, a date and contact details, so that the office receiving it can come back to a real person if something looks wrong.
That is the whole of it. There is no government stamp involved, no court appointment, and no central registry. This surprises people who have dealt with translation in Europe, where several countries maintain official registers of sworn translators who hold a state appointment. India has no equivalent system. No translator or agency in India is “government approved” in that sense, and any company telling you otherwise is describing something that does not exist.
What matters instead is whether the authority receiving your document accepts the certification. In practice, almost all of them accept a properly prepared agency certification, because what they are actually checking is that a competent, identifiable party takes responsibility for the accuracy.
What the certificate has to contain
The requirements vary slightly, but a certificate that satisfies most authorities states the source and target languages, confirms the translation is complete and accurate, identifies the document being translated, and carries the translator’s name and signature along with the date and the agency’s verifiable contact details.
One detail is worth emphasising because it causes real problems: many consulates require the individual translator to be named, not merely the company. A certificate signed only with a company stamp and an illegible signature gets queried surprisingly often. We name the translator as standard for this reason.
Why we mirror the original layout
A certified translation is not a summary and not a clean retyping. The official comparing the two documents is looking from one to the other, checking that each element appears in both. If the original has a seal in the bottom right corner, our translation notes that a seal appears in the bottom right corner and states what it says. If a signature is illegible, we mark it as illegible rather than guessing at a name.
Anything present on the original and absent from the translation reads as an omission, and omissions are the fastest route to rejection. This includes the things people assume do not matter: registration numbers, file references, the printed text on the reverse of the form, and handwritten annotations in the margins.
When you need something more
Certified translation is sufficient for most university applications, most employment verification and many visa categories. It is not sufficient when the authority has specifically asked for notarisation, or when the document is going to a foreign government that requires apostille. Those are separate processes applied on top of the translation, and we cover them on their own pages.
If you are not sure which applies, tell us which office asked and what exactly they said. Reading the actual wording of the request is usually enough to settle it, and it costs you nothing to ask before ordering.