Translation of Work Documents for Finland

Two Official Languages, One File: Which to Choose

Finland has two official languages, Finnish and Swedish; municipalities and institutions use one or the other predominantly according to the region they are in. The decision a candidate assembling a work file has to take early is which language the documents will be translated into. As a rule the language used by the institution concerned governs; English may be accepted in some procedures, but that should be relied on only once confirmed by the institution, never as an assumption. A set of documents prepared in mixed languages makes it harder for the assessor to connect one paper to another. A file coherent in a single language tells in favour of both the speed of examination and the impression of reliability.

The Auktorisoitu Kääntäjä Authorisation and the Examination System

In Finland the title of authorised translator (auktorisoitu kääntäjä) is conferred through a system run by Opetushallitus (EDUFI), and it is valid for a given language pair and a given direction. A translator may thus be authorised from Turkish into Finnish and not authorised the other way round. In work files that detail matters: if the direction is chosen wrongly, the translation cannot be used in an official procedure. An authorised translator’s translation is submitted with a seal and a declaration, and notarisation is not generally sought in addition. You can see the documents falling within this scope on our document types page.

In a Migri File, Employment and Subsistence Are Assessed Together

Work and residence permit matters are handled by Migri. The genuineness of the employment relationship, the conditions of the work and the candidate’s means of subsistence are assessed together in the file; the employer supplies information on its own side too. In regulated professions, professional authorisation runs through a separate authority and calls for curriculum and practice documents; in the health field, language proficiency may arise as a further condition. The document lists of these two tracks overlap but are not the same.

Matching Documents to the Body Concerned

Document	Function	Body concerned
Employment contract	The employment relationship and its conditions	Migri
Diploma and academic transcript	Assessment of qualifications	EDUFI, employer
Curriculum	Professional authorisation	The authority concerned
Employment record	Proof of experience	Migri, employer
Criminal record certificate	Eligibility condition	Migri

The Setback Met With Most Often

The problem seen most often in Finnish files is a document that cannot be used because of the direction in which it was translated or because of the choice of language. Second comes a job description written in general terms in the employment contract; the nature of the post cannot then be made out, and further information is requested. Third, in a regulated profession, the authorisation track never having been started at all prevents the profession being practised even where a residence permit has been granted. All three can be forestalled while the file is being put together.

How Long Documents Stay Valid, and the Risk of Renewal

A frequent difficulty in Finnish files is the mismatch between how long a document remains valid and how long the process runs. Papers such as the criminal record certificate, the civil registry extract and income documents are expected to be of a certain freshness, while professional authorisation can take months. When a candidate starts both tracks at the same time, the documents in the residence file grow stale before the authorisation is concluded. Every document obtained afresh calls for a new authorised translator’s translation, and since translator capacity in the Turkish-Finnish pair can be limited, this is a matter not only of cost but of the calendar.

The way to reduce that risk is to sort the documents by their lifespan. A diploma, an academic transcript and a curriculum lose no value with time; these can be translated at the very start. Registry and civil status documents, by contrast, should be obtained close to the period when the employer and the authorising body are ready. It is also worth asking, when ordering a translation, for the date of issue of the document to appear plainly in the text; the assessor calculates validity from that date. Where the same document will go into both the Migri file and the authorisation file, asking for two copies at the outset markedly reduces the need to renew later.

The choice of language and the window of validity sometimes cut across one another. If a candidate has the documents translated into Finnish, applies, and then finds that the workplace lies in a predominantly Swedish-speaking municipality, both a fresh translation and a fresh round of documents may be called for, and in the meantime the validity of the old ones runs out. The decision on language should therefore be taken before the documents are gathered. A second matter is the scope of an authorised translator’s authorisation as regards direction: a translator authorised from Turkish into Finnish may produce a translation the other way round that cannot be used in an official procedure. Stating the direction plainly when placing the order removes that risk. Finally, since a great many procedures in Finland run electronically, the seal and the declaration must come out legibly on the scanned translation; a seal that cannot be read may cause the document to be treated as uncertified and send the process back to the beginning.

In short, three decisions govern a Finnish file: which language it will be translated into, whether the direction has been chosen correctly, and whether the authorisation track in a regulated profession has been started in time. Files that settle these three points at the outset proceed smoothly even when the documents are many. This page is for general information; since permit categories and the conditions as to language and authorisation can change, confirm the requirements in force from the official announcements of Migri and Opetushallitus. You can request a quotation for your file, see the fees on our pricing page, and look through the other countries in our country directory.