Ukrainian to English Translation

This direction is used when a Ukrainian document has to be put before an English-speaking country. The wave of migration after the war has made it grow markedly: people submitting identity, education and civil registry documents issued in Ukraine to an immigration authority, a university or an employer in the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States or Australia. The document is written in the Cyrillic alphabet, while the authority that will read it assesses it against the Latin-script Anglo-Saxon order.

Concrete examples make the direction clear: the birth and marriage records of a family that fled the war and took refuge in Canada, the diploma of a student wishing to continue their studies in England, the identity and criminal record documents submitted with an application for temporary protection status. What they have in common is that the document makes sense within the Ukrainian system but cannot be read directly by the receiving side because of its alphabet.

Immigration files make up the greater part of demand; wartime conditions make the translation of these documents urgent and heavy in volume. The second group is education documents and the third driving licences and professional documents.

The shared difficulty with these documents is that the Ukrainian administrative reality is not directly recognisable to an English-speaking authority, and that the Cyrillic alphabet has to be transliterated correctly; the translation resolves those differences and carries the document into the target system.

Technical matters peculiar to Ukrainian into English

The first and most critical problem in this pair is transliteration from Cyrillic into Latin letters. For personal and place names the official Latin spelling in the person’s passport is taken as the basis; Ukraine has its own official transliteration system, distinct from the Russian one, and a Ukrainian name is carried across from its Ukrainian source rather than from a Russian pronunciation (for example Kyiv, not Kiev).

Two different transliterations of the same name across two documents make a file that is already fragmented by wartime conditions still more open to dispute; for that reason the transliteration of names is kept identical across the documents of family members. That consistency is decisive in family reunification and status applications.

The Ukrainian official register rests on case inflection; in the move into English it is resolved into prepositional structures and each condition is set out separately. Institutional names are rendered according to their function; registry numbers are not translated but given with a reference to the record.

The patronymic is a separate element in Ukrainian documents and is not removed in the English translation but carried across on its own. Because dates are given in day-month-year order, the month is written out in words in the English translation.

The seal and registration details on the document are preserved in place; in Ukrainian documents the seal forms part of verification. The grading system is not equated with an English counterpart but explained.

Under wartime conditions some documents may have been issued incompletely or on a provisional basis; the translation carries across the information the document holds as it stands, makes no attempt to fill in missing fields, and reflects the nature of the document accurately.

Some documents may carry wording in both Ukrainian and Russian; the translation makes clear which language has been taken as the basis and gives priority to the Ukrainian source. The current official form of place names is used. In older documents from the Soviet or transitional period, institutional names are preserved in the form they had at the time and an explanation is added where necessary, because forcing them into a present-day counterpart damages the historical accuracy of the document.

Which documents call for this direction

• Birth, marriage and civil registry records
• Diplomas, the atestat and transcripts of marks
• Criminal record, residence and immigration file documents
• Driving licences and professional documents
• Medical and vaccination records

Immigration files make up the greater part of demand; keeping the transliteration of names identical across the documents of family members is critical in family reunification and status applications. In education documents a breakdown of courses is required.

Medical and vaccination records are translated often, so that children can be enrolled at school and reach health services; the dates and dose details in these documents are conveyed in full. On driving licences the category information is given accurately.

Chain of certification

Because the target is an English-speaking country, the sworn translator system does not come into play: the United States and the United Kingdom ask for a signed statement of accuracy, Canada for a translator registered with a provincial association or an affidavit, Australia for NAATI accreditation. A document arriving from Ukraine is expected to carry an apostille.

Delay in obtaining some documents, or their apostille, under wartime conditions is taken into account, and this is discussed with the applicant beforehand. For these differing expectations, look at the certification regime of the target country and the requirements for the document type.

Tell us the Latin spelling of the name 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 figures here are for a typical file; the page count and the difficulty of the subject may affect the outcome. We advise checking the current position with the authority that will handle the matter.