Birth Certificate Translation for Spain

The multilingual standard-form extract (certificación plurilingüe) as an alternative

Turkish civil registry offices can issue a birth record as a multilingual international document – a standard-form extract – under the relevant international convention. Spain is a party to that framework, so the multilingual extract may be accepted in many procedures without any separate translation. This is the most practical difference Spain makes to a birth certificate: asking the civil registry office for the multilingual extract first can remove the cost of a separate translation altogether. Some authorities may still call for a full translation, so you need to confirm with your counterpart which form is accepted; in processes such as citizenship in particular, a full translation is likely to be required.

Consistency in how Turkish letters are rendered

When a full translation is required, the most frequent difficulty in carrying names across is how Turkish letters should appear in a Spanish text. The governing principle is not to read the letters phonetically but to follow the official spelling in the person’s passport exactly; however the name is written there, the traductor jurado translation uses that same spelling. Showing a letter such as “ı” or “ğ” in more than one way creates inconsistency even within a single document and makes identity matching harder for the Registro Civil or the Extranjería. Where a person has two or more forenames, the order is preserved, and separate fields such as the mother’s maiden name are never merged into one another. Province and district names appearing as the place of birth are not translated; they keep their original spelling. Dates are carried across as they stand; only where necessary is the month written in Spanish, and the day and year are not altered. Because surnames work differently in Spanish administration – a tradition in which the father’s and the mother’s surnames are used together – it matters that Turkish names with a single surname are carried across as they are and that no artificial second surname is added to the document; the translator conveys what the document says and does not try to fit it to the Spanish surname structure. When several documents belonging to the same family are submitted together, having every name look the same heads off needless questions in Registro Civil and Extranjería procedures. A birth certificate is read as one link in a person’s chain of identity, so an exact match between the name and date details here and the passport, and any residence document, makes it easier for the file to be accepted first time.

Name transliteration and the traductor jurado

If the multilingual extract is not accepted and a full translation is needed, the most critical point is how names and place names are carried across. Names containing Turkish special characters must be identical to the passport spelling; the place of birth and the province and district names keep their original spelling. The names of the mother, the father and the child, along with the date and place of birth, are conveyed without interpretation. A full translation submitted to an official procedure in Spain must be produced by a sworn translator (traductor jurado) appointed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAEC); a translation from outside the MAEC list is not valid. In a translation produced in Türkiye, the sworn translator signs it, the notary notarises it and an apostille is attached.

How a birth certificate differs from a civil registry extract

A birth certificate and a civil registry extract are different documents; the first records the event of birth, the second shows the person’s current registration details. Finding out at the outset which one the Spanish authority wants keeps you from translating the wrong document and starting the process over. The translation shows the type of document correctly in its heading; where there are marginal annotations (marriage, divorce, recognition), these too are translated in full, or appear with their equivalents in the multilingual extract, because they show the person’s marital status.

The apostille and the order of certification

Before you submit, keep these points in mind:

• First confirm whether the multilingual standard-form extract is accepted.
• If a full translation is needed, verify whether it must come from a traductor jurado or through the chain of steps in Türkiye.
• Check that the marginal annotations have been translated; on the full-translation route, obtain the apostille before the translation.

Spain is a party to the Hague Apostille Convention; confirm the current position from the official HCCH list. You can see the level of certification required for other documents on our document types page, review the cost on our pricing page, and upload your document for a quote. Translations are handled from our single office in Ankara Kızılay. Practice is updated from time to time, so check the institution’s current announcement before you begin.