Turkish documents for francophone authorities

This site is written for one situation: a document issued in Türkiye has to be accepted by an authority that works in French. That authority is usually in Québec or elsewhere in Canada, sometimes in Switzerland, Belgium or Luxembourg — and each of those systems decides for itself who is allowed to produce the translation.

So the first question is not what a translation costs. It is who is permitted to make the one the receiving office will accept. We answer that before you send us anything, including when the honest answer means we do not get the job.

Start with the destination, not the document

The same Turkish birth record is handled three different ways depending on where it lands. A federal Canadian file accepts a translation made abroad, provided the translator’s declaration travels with it. A Québec provincial file expects a translator registered with the province’s professional order. A Belgian file expects a translator on the Belgian national register — and expects the apostille itself to be translated along with the document.

None of that is a property of your document. It is a property of the office receiving it. The four systems are set side by side on the francophone countries comparison page.

Québec and Canada

Québec runs its own selection process and its own translation rule, and the two are routinely confused with the federal ones. The rule is set out on the Québec translation rules page. The blunt version — whether a translation made in Türkiye will pass — has a page of its own, because it is the question we are asked most often.

Federal files follow different logic: the federal document and translation rules accept a translation produced anywhere, as long as the translator’s declaration accompanies it. A single immigration project can contain both stages, which is how people end up paying for the same document twice.

Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg

In Switzerland the decision sits at cantonal level, so a document accepted in one canton can be returned in another; the Switzerland overview explains what to confirm in writing before you spend anything. Belgium is stricter but better documented: the Belgian sworn translator system is a national register, and the order of operations there is fixed — apostille first, translation afterwards.

The direction that runs the other way

Many readers have the opposite problem: a Canadian, Swiss, Belgian or French document that a Turkish authority now needs. That chain we run from end to end, because every certification step in it happens in Türkiye. Using French documents in Türkiye describes the pattern — apostille in the issuing country, sworn translation and notarisation here.

The French words in your instructions

Applicants working in English are handed French terms with no explanation: traduction assermentée, traducteur agréé, extrait plurilingue, mention marginale. Each names a different procedure, so mistaking one for another is expensive. What “traduction assermentée” actually means is the entry point, and the whole set is collected in a quick glossary.

What we do from Ankara

We are a translation office in Ankara. On a francophone file our work is usually document work rather than translation: obtaining a record from the Turkish registry under a power of attorney, requesting a sealed transcript from a university, arranging notarisation, taking the file through the apostille step and couriering wet-signed copies abroad. That side of the job is described in obtaining Turkish documents from abroad.

How to start

Send an image of the document and, above all, the name of the office that will receive it. The destination decides everything else — language, translator, order of steps. How our pricing is built is on the fees page, and the upload form is at get a quote.