Czech to German Translation

This direction is used when a Czech document has to be put before a German-speaking country. The typical applicant studied or worked in Czechia and is moving to Germany, Austria or Switzerland; the shared border of the two countries and the heavy cross-border movement of labour keep this direction in constant demand. The document carries the Czech administrative order, while the authority that will read it assesses it under the German regime.

Concrete examples make the direction clear: a person seeking professional recognition in Germany with a Czech diploma, a family carrying the registration of a child born in Czechia over to a German registry office, a business presenting the registry documents of a Czech company to its German partner. What these documents have in common is that the Czech administrative structure and the special letters of the language are not directly readable for a German authority.

Cross-border day workers make up an important part of this direction; service, insurance and tax documents travel regularly between the institutions of the two countries. In those files, conveying the date ranges and the employers’ titles exactly is decisive.

Translating these documents is a matter of translating institutions and not only language; Czech concepts are rendered according to their function within the German administrative order.

Because of the Czech community in Germany and the heavy movement of labour across the border region, a file in this direction often consists of several documents; diploma, civil registry and service papers are submitted together, and all of them are expected to be translated with one spelling of the name and with consistent terms. Different translators writing the same person differently can be grounds for refusal for a German authority.

Czech institutional abbreviations are not carried into the German text as they stand; they are expanded and, where needed, given with the original form in brackets. In the medical and engineering professions a diploma alone does not suffice; the curriculum, the practical hours and the examination content are asked for as well, which enlarges the volume of translation.

In terms of length, the German rendering has fewer words but longer individual ones; in narrow-column tables and in the limited space of sealed documents, the problem of line breaking is solved not by shortening the word but by rebuilding the table layout.

Technical matters peculiar to Czech into German

The first point to watch in this pair is women’s surnames: in Czech they mostly end in the -ová suffix (for instance Nováková). That ending is not dropped in the translation or reduced to the masculine form; it is preserved exactly as spelled in the passport, since otherwise the translation conflicts with the civil registry record.

The hooked and accented letters of Czech (ř, č, š, ž, ě) are preserved in personal and place names and are not reduced to German letters. Place names are not translated but given in their original spelling.

The Czech official register rests on case inflection; as noun phrases pass into German, each element is made to enter the German case system correctly. Institutional names are rendered according to their function; the grading system, in which 1 is the best and 5 the worst, is not converted to the German scale but explained.

The seal and registration date on the document are preserved in place; registry numbers are not translated but given with a reference to the record. Dates are written in day-month-year order and with full stops.

Since the Czech diploma system rests on the European higher education framework, the credit and level information in the transcript is preserved openly; the German recognition body assesses on those data.

In older documents from the Czechoslovak period, institutional and place names may appear in the form they had at the time; these names are preserved as they stand and an explanation is added where necessary. Where Czech and Slovak are mixed in a document, which language has been taken as the source is made clear.

It is stated openly that on the Czech 1–5 grading scale the lower number shows the higher achievement; otherwise a German reader may read the scale the wrong way round. Across documents belonging to the same person, the form of the surname is kept consistent.

Which documents call for this direction

• Diplomas, the vysvědčení (school report) and transcripts of marks
• Birth, marriage and civil registry records
• Employment, service and criminal record (výpis z rejstříku trestů) documents
• Pension and social security correspondence
• Trade registry and tax documents

Because of cross-border work, insurance and tax correspondence is often seen; date ranges and employers’ titles are conveyed exactly. In diploma files a detailed breakdown of the courses is required.

In family files the form of the surname and the relationships between relatives are set out openly. In commercial documents the company type and the registry number are conveyed in their original form.

Chain of certification

If the target is Germany or Austria, a translation by a court-sworn translator (beeidigter Übersetzer) is expected; if it is Switzerland, cantonal notarisation. A document arriving from Czechia has to carry an apostille.

To see these expectations and the certification regime of the target country, look at the country page and at the requirements for the document type. Tell us the spelling of the name as it stands in the passport, and the receiving institution, before you send the document.

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The information below is a guide; in this language pair the level of certification is set by the receiving institution. It is worth looking at the institution’s own published guidance before you decide.