Translation of Work Documents for Slovakia

The Requirement of a Translator Entered in the Ministry of Justice Register

Official translation in Slovakia is carried out by translators entered in the Ministry of Justice register and holding the title úradný prekladateľ. These translators bind the translation to the original document, or to a certified copy of it, seal it and attach a translator’s declaration. Because the entry can be checked against the register number, a translation by someone who is not on the register is not accepted in official procedures. Anyone putting a work file together needs to reckon with this condition early; a notarised translation prepared in Türkiye cannot be used directly in Slovakia. Since the number of registered translators in a given language pair may be small, the step of finding a translator has to be built into the timetable.

Business Conducted Before the Foreigners’ Police

Residence and work permit business in Slovakia is handled by the foreigners’ police units. What comes to the fore in the file is documentary proof of the employment relationship and of the accommodation arrangement; on the employer’s side, the post has to be registered. The applicant submits the qualification and identity documents along this same line. Most of the documents are subject to a currency requirement, which is why obtaining registry and civil status documents before the employer’s steps are complete is usually a move made too early. Our document types page sets out the scope of this set.

The SAAIC Assessment and Regulated Professions

What a foreign diploma corresponds to in the Slovak system is assessed through the centre within SAAIC. That assessment shows the level of the education and makes the qualification intelligible to the employer; in regulated professions the right to practise is granted separately by the authority concerned. The authorisation file generally calls for the curriculum, the teaching hours and records of practical training. Where a file is put together without keeping the two lines apart, the applicant obtains the permit but cannot begin work in the profession.

Documents and the Reasons for Them

Document	Why it is asked for	Who deals with it
Employment contract	The employment relationship	Foreigners’ police
Diploma	Assessment of qualification	The SAAIC centre
Curriculum	Professional authorisation	The authority concerned
Accommodation document	The residence condition	Foreigners’ police
Criminal record certificate	The suitability condition	Foreigners’ police

The Ground for Refusal Met Most Often

The negative outcome seen most often in Slovak files is documents that fail the currency requirement; registry and civil status documents are expected to be of a certain freshness, so papers obtained early can become useless. In second place comes a translation not made by a translator on the register. Third, an accommodation document that is missing or not in the proper form delays completion of the file.

The Formal Requirements for the Accommodation Document

One of the documents sent back most often in Slovak files is proof of accommodation. What is expected is a paper showing where the applicant will stay in the country and carrying the approval of the owner or of the landlord. A tenancy agreement may not be enough on its own; some units ask for a separate declaration from the owner and for information from the title deed record. Since these documents are drawn up in Slovakia they need no translation, but they must agree with the documents coming from Türkiye as to name and identity details; if the name in the passport and the name on the accommodation document differ, the file cannot be matched up.

Where the accommodation is provided by the employer, the company is expected to give that undertaking in writing. The critical point for the applicant is that the document should be ready before the permit application, because when a file is left incomplete for want of an accommodation document, registry and civil status documents obtained earlier can go stale while they wait. The practical method with files bound for Slovakia is to have the documents coming from Türkiye translated once the accommodation arrangement is settled, and to submit the whole set at once. That way the registered translator’s calendar is called on only once and the window of validity on the documents is preserved.

A second risk to the currency of documents is that the process is spread across two countries. While the applicant is gathering papers in Türkiye, the employer in Slovakia is working through its own steps; when the two timetables are not shared, the documents are prepared either too early or too late. The practical way of preventing this is to ask the employer for the date targeted for the application in writing and to plan the short-lived documents backwards from it. The registered translator’s calendar has to be built into that plan as well; if no allowance is made for delivery taking weeks in busy periods, documents can lose their validity while they sit with the translator. Since the apostille stage is carried out in Türkiye, every endorsement needs to be complete before the applicant leaves the country; obtaining an apostille from abroad takes a long time and makes a power of attorney unavoidable.

Three items stand out in a Slovak file: the requirement of a translator on the register, the form of the accommodation document, and the window of currency on the documents. All three can be settled before the file is put together; noticed afterwards, each of them produces a new document and a fresh round of translation. This page is general information; since the conditions for residence and work permits can change, confirm the requirements in force from the official announcements of the foreigners’ police unit and of the authority concerned. You can request a quotation for your file, see the charges on our pricing page, and compare other countries in our directory of countries.