I am a certified translator with the UK Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) (Membership number 00024532), a Chartered Linguist with the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL) (CIOL number: 72852), and a member of the American Translators Association (ATA) (Member number: 273323).
Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) is the only UK-based membership association providing a professional home for practising translators, interpreters and all those involved in supplying language services.
CIOL (Chartered Institute of Linguists) is the UK’s Royal Charter body for language professionals and linguists.
RexTrans provides chinese certified translation services on GOV.UK for British nationals in China.
The American Translators Association (ATA) is the largest professional association of translators and interpreters in the United States with nearly 8,500 members in more than 100 countries.
Adoptions registered in mainland China are recorded on a 收养登记证 (shōuyǎng dēngjì zhèng, Adoption Registration Certificate), and every UK body that later has to act on that adoption — the Home Office, a local authority adoption team, the family court, HM Passport Office, a school — needs it in certified English. I translate the certificate and the papers around it at £30 per page of 250 words, signed and returned as a PDF within 24 hours, with notarisation available as an add-on if you are told to include it.
The certificate is a booklet issued by the 民政局 (Civil Affairs Bureau) and built much like a Chinese marriage certificate: a stiff cover bearing the national emblem, a photograph, an embossed seal, a red ink seal from the registering authority and a registrar’s signature. Inside are three parties, and keeping them apart in English is the whole job. 收养人 is the adopter. 被收养人 is the child being adopted. 送养人 is the party placing the child — a birth parent, a guardian, or a social welfare institute — and translating that simply as parent destroys the distinction the document exists to record. Alongside them sit the registration date, the certificate number and the registering office’s full name.
The certificate is rarely enough on its own. Depending on how the adoption came about, the bundle usually also holds some of:
Names are where these translations most often go wrong. A child’s name frequently changes at adoption, and welfare institutes have historically assigned surnames of their own, so the birth record, the institute’s files and the registration certificate can carry two or three different names for the same child. I do not harmonise them. Each document gets the name it actually bears, with the characters shown, and I add a translator’s note where a reader would otherwise think they were looking at two different children. Where a passport already exists, its spelling governs everything going forward.
Estimated dates need the same discipline. For a child found rather than relinquished, the date of birth on Chinese paperwork is an administrative estimate, and the Chinese often says so outright with 推定 or 估计. That word stays in the English. Smoothing it into a plain date of birth creates an inconsistency with the rest of the file that somebody will eventually have to explain, usually at the worst possible moment.
Older adoptions form their own category. Registration in the modern form belongs to the 1990s onwards, and before that — or in rural areas where nothing was registered at the time — a family may hold only a notarial deed, a village committee letter, or nothing beyond the household register entry. Those papers are usually handwritten, sometimes faded, and thick with local administrative vocabulary. I translate what is legible, mark what is not, and describe the seals rather than pretending they are absent.
Send photographs or scans of everything you have, including items you suspect are irrelevant — it costs nothing for me to look, and it beats discovering a gap two days before a deadline. Tell me which body has asked for the translation and how the names should be spelled, and I will come back with a page count, a price and a delivery time before any work starts. Revisions are included.
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Certified translations are often required for official purposes such as submissions to UK universities, courts, government agencies, and more.
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According to GOV.UK, your document must be certified by a professional or a person well-respected in your community (‘of good standing’). The person you ask should not be:
– Related to you
– Living at the same address
– In a relationship with you
In practice, UK authorities tend to recognize documents certified by authoritative translators, which can reduce the risk of rejection and save you time. You can minimize errors, omissions, or rejection by using a translator or translation company affiliated with a recognized professional body, such as the Association of Translation Companies (ATC), the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI), or the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL).
No. The Chinese certificate is an administrative registration issued by the Civil Affairs Bureau recording that an adoption was registered, whereas a UK adoption order is made by a court. They serve related purposes but they are not equivalent instruments, so my translation says what the Chinese document actually is rather than dressing it in English court vocabulary. Whether a registered Chinese adoption is recognised in your particular situation is a legal question for a solicitor or the relevant authority. What I can do is make sure they are reading precisely what the certificate says.
Each document keeps the name it actually bears. If the birth record shows one name, the welfare institute another and the registration certificate a third, I translate all three as written and add a translator’s note explaining that they refer to the same child, so nobody reading the file concludes the documents are unrelated. Where a passport already exists, its spelling governs the current name throughout the bundle. Tell me at the outset which names belong to whom — that one piece of information prevents most of the confusion in adoption files.
The price starts from GBP30.
Our rates vary depending on the complexity and length of the document as well as the required turnaround time. We provide a free, no-obligation quote upon reviewing your document, ensuring that you know exactly what the translation will cost before proceeding.
The number of pages for certified translations is determined by the total word count of the document. A single page is considered to be 250 words or fewer, including any numerical data.
If a page exceeds 250 words, we will adjust the calculation accordingly based on the word count. At that point, you will need to request a quote from us.
Find out more about how pages are calculated.
The process begins with you sending us a scan or a clear photograph of your document. We then translate the document and provide a certification statement that attests to the accuracy of the translation and the qualifications of the translator. The certified translation is then stamped with our official seal and mailed to you.
That is common, particularly for adoptions arranged within an extended family or in rural areas before registration became routine. What survives is often a household register showing the child with the relationship recorded as 养子 or 养女, sometimes a notarial deed, a village committee letter or a written statement from the birth family. I translate whatever exists, mark anything illegible rather than guessing at it, and describe the seals. Send photographs of everything and I will tell you what you actually hold before you commit to a translation.
It depends on who is asking. A local authority adoption team or the Home Office tends to want the full chain: the child’s birth record, the registration certificate, the household register pages, the adoption agreement and any welfare institute or police report. A school place or a passport application usually needs far less. Send me the list of what has been requested along with photographs of the file, and I will tell you which items are genuinely needed and which duplicates you do not need to pay to have translated.
If you still have questions that are not covered here, feel free to reach out to me directly.