Certified translation Arabic–German

Syrian civil-registry extracts

Syrian proof of civil status usually arrives as a register extract: either a family-register extract listing parents, spouse and children in one table, or an individual extract for one person. Both are drawn fresh for each occasion, so they are often newly issued, carry several stamps of the civil-registry office and sometimes handwritten additions in the margin. We carry the extract over line by line — register numbers, place names, marginal notes and stamp texts included. Where a column is empty, the translation leaves it empty; nothing is filled in.

Egyptian documents

Egyptian birth certificates come in two generations: the older, partly handwritten register extract and the computer-generated form of the civil-registry authority carrying the national ID number. Alongside them we see marriage contracts with a religious formula and witnesses, divorce documents, and certified copies of school and university certificates. Some of these forms are pre-printed bilingually while the entries themselves are Arabic — what gets translated is exactly what was entered, not the form around it.

Names, name chains and ISO transliteration

For documents originally issued in Arabic or Cyrillic script, the Standesamt in Berlin states the rule: the translation of personal names — given names, family names, birth names, name chains, patronymics — must follow the transliteration norms, and it names ISO 9-1995 among them. For Arabic documents that means the name chain is transliterated by norm, not by ear and not after a spelling some authority abroad once chose. Tell us the spelling in your passport so the translator can carry it as a note.

Source: berlin.de (checked 5 November 2026)

When the translation was made abroad

Many documents reach us with a translation the issuing country attached. The Standesamt in Berlin records that transliteration norms are frequently not applied in translations produced abroad, which is what makes a supplementary translation in Germany necessary. In practice: the attached version is useful to you, but it is not the translation a German office is looking for. We work from the Arabic original in that case, not from the existing rendering.

Source: berlin.de (checked 5 November 2026)

Who may translate in Germany

The Standesamt in Cologne puts it like this for registering a marriage concluded abroad: a foreign-language document also needs a translation by an interpreter or translator, and they must be publicly appointed or sworn in Germany; if the document is not written in Latin letters, a transliteration to the ISO standard is necessary, and document and translation are to be presented in the original. That is exactly our product: a translation carrying the certification note, stamp and signature of someone sworn in Germany.

Source: stadt-koeln.de (checked 5 November 2026)

Why German at all?

§ 23(1) VwVfG is short: the official language is German. Subsection 2 lets the authority require a translation of foreign-language applications and documents, and in justified cases expressly one whose accuracy has been certified. That is why an Arabic document is translated even when the case worker speaks Arabic: the file has to be readable in German, not the conversation at the counter.

Source: gesetze-im-internet.de (checked 5 November 2026)

Apostille and legalisation

The Federal Foreign Office describes the apostille as confirmation that a public document is genuine, for which the original has to be presented; legalisation is the equivalent confirmation by the mission of the destination country. Both concern the authenticity of the paper, not its content — a translation is neither. We issue no apostilles and arrange no legalisation. Where an apostille is attached to the original, we translate it too, so the office has both in one set.

Source: auswaertiges-amt.de (checked 5 November 2026)