Bulgarian Translation

Translating into a language that has no infinitive

Among the Slavic languages, this is the one that lost its infinitive. Constructions built in Turkish with the “-mek, -mak” ending – the kind of “it was decided that it be carried out” formula so common in official texts – have no direct counterpart; each one is turned into a subordinate clause introduced by a conjunction. That conversion forces person and tense to be stated openly, whereas the Turkish original may well have left them vague. The translator has to choose, deliberately, a structure that keeps the vagueness intact.

More critical still is a separate verb form used for events the speaker did not witness. Once it is used, the sentence slides towards the tone of “so it is said”. In an official document translation, reporting an event in that form turns a statement from a direct finding into hearsay; in translations of court judgments and civil registry records, this is the error with the gravest consequences.

One person, two documents, two spellings of the name

The difficulty that arises most often in files connected with this country is that the name a person bears in older records does not match the name in their Turkish passport. In documents drawn up in the past, the name may have been written according to the practice of the day; in today’s translation, the passport spelling governs.

The answer is not to set about “correcting” the name in the translation. Each document is translated with the spelling it carries; showing that the two spellings belong to the same person is a separate job, done through a name equivalence certificate or a court decision. A translator who merges the two names into one form puts the document out of step with its source.

Situation	Wrong solution	Right solution
A different name in an old record	Changing the name to match the passport	Translating the name as it stands and attaching a separate equivalence certificate
Father’s name	Taking it for a middle name and merging it	Keeping it as a separate field
Place names	Translating what they mean	Carrying over the original spelling
Institution name	Rendering it with a neighbouring country’s term	Using the country’s own administrative term

Which files come in

Social security and pension correspondence leads the field. For people whose working lives are split between the two countries, service records, contribution records and medical reports are requested in both directions; in these files the date ranges and the employer names must be carried across exactly. The second cluster is property and inheritance matters: title deed records, certificates of succession and powers of attorney.

The third cluster is cross-border trade and transport. Customs declarations, carriage contracts, vehicle registration documents and insurance papers make up a regular volume. The fourth is education; undergraduate and postgraduate applications call for academic transcripts, diplomas and course descriptions. Company formation and branch procedures, meanwhile, have made the translation of trade registry records a permanent item of work.

Writing dates, figures and abbreviations

Dates are written day, month, year, with the abbreviation meaning “year” placed after the year; dropping that abbreviation counts as an omission in an official text. When the month is spelled out it begins with a lower-case letter. The decimal separator is the comma.

The personal identification number is a structured number that carries the date of birth and the sex within it; a separate type of number is used for foreign nationals, and the two must not be confused. Institutional abbreviations in the document are spelled out where they first appear, with the original abbreviation kept in brackets.

Stamps, handwriting and passages that cannot be read

Because most of the documents in files bound for this country date back many years, the pages carry annotations added by hand, faded stamps and signatures whose ink has bled. Not one of these may be passed over: stamp text is translated as far as it can be made out, and whatever cannot be read is marked in square brackets.

A correction added by hand very often holds the most important information on the document; a later change of surname or a corrected date can be established only from such a note. The translation must show these details in the positions they occupy on the document, so that the institution can compare it line by line against the source.

Tell us in advance which institution the document is going to and, if there is one, the spelling of the name in older records; terminology and name consistency are built on that. To see the page count and the delivery date straight away, upload your document, or go through the detailed rate table.

The figures given here are based on the current tariff; in rarer languages, translator availability can extend the timescale. The safest course is to ask the relevant office for written confirmation before work begins.