Polish to German Translation

This direction is used when a Polish document has to be put before a German-speaking country. The large Polish community settled in Germany is the group that asks for it most: people submitting a diploma, a civil registry record or a registry certificate drawn up in Poland to a university, an employer or an authority in Germany, Austria or Switzerland. The document carries the Polish administrative order, while the authority that will read it assesses it under the German regime.

Concrete examples make the direction clear: a student who has finished secondary school in Poland and is applying to a university in Germany, a person who worked in Germany for many years and is now pursuing a pension claim, a family carrying the registration of a child born in Poland over to a German registry office. What these documents have in common is that the Polish administrative structure and the special letters of the language are not directly readable for a German authority.

Family reunification and professional recognition files are the backbone of demand; a large number of documents are submitted together and are expected to come from one hand. Pension and social security correspondence likewise travels regularly between the institutions of the two countries.

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

Because of the long-established Polish community in Germany, 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. A person’s name written differently in one document can on its own be grounds for refusal.

Polish 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 and the practical hours 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; where sealed documents leave little room, the problem of line breaking is solved not by shortening the word but by rebuilding the table layout. The address field is set out afresh to follow the German order for service of notice.

Technical matters peculiar to Polish into German

The stroked and tailed letters of Polish (ł, ń, ś, ż, ź, ą, ę) are preserved in personal and place names; the letter ł in particular is not confused with the German l. Place names are not translated but given in their original spelling.

Women’s surnames mostly differ from the masculine form (for instance -ski / -ska); the spelling in the passport is taken as the basis, and the masculine form is not used in one document and the feminine in another. This consistency is preserved across documents belonging to the same person.

The Polish official register makes heavy use of case inflection; as noun phrases pass into German, the case system is built afresh. Institutional names are rendered according to their function; the Polish grading system (2–5, in some places 6) 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 Polish 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.

Because of the border changes after the Second World War, place names may appear in different forms in some older documents; these names are preserved as they stand and an explanation is added where necessary.

In pension files, conveying the periods worked and the employers’ titles exactly bears directly on the calculation made in Germany; particular care is given to date ranges.

Which documents call for this direction

• Diplomas, the świadectwo (school report) and transcripts of marks
• Birth, marriage and civil registry records (akt urodzenia)
• Employment, service and criminal record documents
• Pension and social security correspondence
• Trade registry and tax documents

In diploma files a detailed breakdown of the courses and credits is needed for the German recognition body to make its assessment. Writing the surname the same way throughout the documents belonging to one person secures the identity match.

In pension files the periods and the employer details are conveyed exactly. In commercial documents the company name and the registry number are given in their original form.

Chain of certification

If the target is Germany or Austria, a translation by a court-sworn translator is expected; if it is Switzerland, cantonal notarisation. A document arriving from Poland 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 form of the surname as it stands in the passport, and the receiving institution, before you send the document.

Upload your document to see the page count and the current fee, and compare the unit prices.

The information below is a guide; in this language pair the level of certification is set by the receiving institution. For definite information, rely on the current announcement of the institution concerned.