Who This is for
The pleading, the exhibits and the agreement all have to reach the court in Arabic, in the accepted form, before the filing date.
The attestation is complete, the papers are correct, and they came back because the translation was not from an approved source.
The passport says one thing, the degree certificate says another, and the authority has treated them as two people.
A lease, an employment contract or a settlement drafted in Arabic, where you need an accurate parallel version before you commit rather than a summary afterwards.
A bank, university or registry abroad asking for a certified translation of a trade licence, judgment, salary certificate or civil document.
Transliteration: the Failure Mode Nobody Writes About
Alexander. Aleksandr. Alexandre. Aleksander.
One name, four defensible renderings — and the UAE system does not treat them as the same person. A file where the passport, the degree and the translated marriage certificate disagree contains an unexplained discrepancy, and the authority is entitled to stop on that alone.
Company names, addresses, patronymics and middle names that some countries include and others drop — in both directions, Latin into Arabic too.
Decide the transliteration, verify it against the passport MRZ and anything already in the UAE system, then apply it to everything that follows. Expensive after eight documents; cheap at the first.
What's Included
How it Works
Establish the receiving authority
The requirement is set by whoever receives the document, and it is settled before translation rather than after a rejection.
Check the source document is in a translatable state
Where the document must be attested, attestation generally comes first — the translation is normally made from the attested original, and translating a document later re-issued or corrected means translating it twice.
Fix the names
Every personal name, company name and place name in the file is settled against the passport and the existing UAE record before translation begins, and then used identically everywhere. This is a deliberate step, not a by-product.
Translate
By a translator approved for the purpose and competent in the subject matter — a court pleading, a set of articles of association and a medical report are not interchangeable work.
Certify and present
Stamped, signed and bound or attached in the accepted form. Where the authority requires the translation to be notarised or attested in turn, that step follows.
Keep the file consistent
Where documents arrive over weeks — as they do in a formation, a visa file or a litigation bundle — later translations are matched to the terminology and spellings used in the earlier ones.
What We Need from You
Most of this is a scan and an email — none of it needs to be perfect before we talk, and we tell you exactly what is missing after the first review.
Timeline and Cost
Turnaround depends on length, subject matter, the language pair and whether certification or notarisation follows. Court bundles and corporate sets are longer than single certificates, and a document that has to be attested first is governed by the attestation timeline rather than the translation one.
Where a filing date is fixed, tell us at the outset. Compressed turnaround is possible far more often than a missed attestation step is recoverable.
Our fee is fixed and agreed in writing against a defined scope — documents, language pairs and whether certification or notarisation is included — before work starts. It is anchored to the work, never to the value of the contract or the amount in dispute.
Get a Fixed QuoteWhere it Goes Wrong
For official use the question is not quality but source: many authorities accept translations only from translators approved for the purpose, presented, stamped and certified in a particular form. A perfect translation from an unapproved translator, a bilingual member of staff or a machine is rejected without being read, and the rejection tells you nothing about the text.
The most common single cause of a stalled document file. It is also the one clients are most surprised by, because every individual document is correct.
Where the authority wants the translation made from the attested document, translating the untouched original produces work that has to be repeated.
Corporate structures, share classes, officer titles and legal concepts do not map one-to-one between systems. Where the same term is rendered differently in the articles and in the board resolution, a registrar reads two different things. Consistency across a set is a translation decision, not an editorial nicety.
A bilingual agreement whose two versions have drifted apart is worse than a single-language one. Where no governing language has been agreed, a discrepancy becomes a dispute about which text applies.
A summary, an unsigned draft, an extract, or a scan missing the reverse of the page carrying the seal. Official use generally requires the complete document, including stamps and endorsements.
Questions
What makes a translation “legal” or “sworn”?
That it is produced and certified by a translator approved to do so for official use in the UAE, and presented in the form the receiving authority accepts. It is a question of standing, not of style.
Can I use my own translator, or a bilingual colleague?
For understanding a document, of course. For submission to a court, a registrar, a ministry or a notary, generally not — the authority looks at who certified it.
Does every document going to a UAE authority need Arabic?
No. Courts and many government submissions require it; a number of processes accept English. It depends on the receiving authority, which is why we establish that first.
Which comes first, attestation or translation?
As a rule, attestation. The translation is usually made from the attested document. There are exceptions driven by the receiving authority, and we check yours before starting.
My name is spelled differently on two documents already. Can it be fixed?
Usually, but the fix depends on which document is wrong relative to the passport and whether anything has been issued on the incorrect spelling. Send us both documents and the passport before translating anything further, so the error does not propagate.
Do you translate into languages other than Arabic and English?
Yes, across a range of language pairs for official use, in both directions — including UAE documents prepared for institutions abroad.
Can you certify a translation someone else produced?
We would need to review it, and re-translation is often the faster route. Certifying another party’s text means taking responsibility for it, and we will not do that without checking it properly.
Is a notarised translation the same as a certified one?
No. Certification is the translator’s attestation of the translation; notarisation is a further step by a notary. Some authorities want one, some want both. We confirm which applies to your submission.