Russian Translation

A name in three parts, and the field left empty

The registration system on the Russian-speaking side knows a person by a name in three parts: a given name, a middle name derived from the father’s name, and a surname. Turkish documents have no such derived middle name; the father’s name sits in a field of its own, in its underived form. When that field is left empty on a form, or when the father’s name is written straight into the patronymic slot, the identity match falls apart.

The correct practice is to carry the father’s name across in the form it takes on the source document, under its own field label. A translator who derives a patronymic from it according to the local rule puts the document at odds with its own source, and a correction is demanded at the notarisation stage.

Surnames in this language also decline inside the sentence. Official translation leaves personal names in their base form and builds the sentence around them; a declined surname drifts away from the spelling in the passport.

Definiteness in a language without articles

There is no definite article in this language; whether a noun is being spoken of definitely or indefinitely follows from word order and context. What Turkish carries with its accusative suffix has to be conveyed here by moving the word within the sentence. In contracts that can leave it unclear which document or which goods are meant, and the guard against it is word order chosen deliberately.

The distinction between completed and uncompleted action in the verb is decisive as well: a phrase such as “payment shall be made” is rendered by two different verbs depending on whether it points to the act being finished or to the process itself. Long chains of participles are common in legal texts, and those chains do not map one to one onto the piling-up of suffixes in Turkish.

Field	Frequent mistake	Consequence
Father’s name	Deriving a patronymic by the local rule	The document no longer matches its source
Surname	Declining it inside the sentence	The match with the passport breaks down
Institution name	Translating it word by word	Its remit is misunderstood
Definiteness	Leaving word order to chance	The scope becomes arguable

The files that come in

Employment and construction lead the way: employment contracts, professional certificates, occupational safety instructions and site reports. The second area is family law; marriage, birth and divorce records together with custody arrangements are in constant demand, mixed marriages being as common as they are.

The third area is property and inheritance. The fourth is foreign trade: contracts, customs declarations, certificates of conformity and arbitration correspondence. Health tourism is a substantial item too; treatment reports and test results are translated for follow-up once the patient is home, and medicines are given by their active substance.

Older documents and names that have changed

A significant part of the files arriving in this language contain documents dating back decades. The institutions of that period operate today under different names, and some city and administrative-unit names have changed. In translation the name on the document is preserved in the form it had on the date it was drawn up; updating it would be to falsify the document.

Even so, it is sensible to give today’s counterpart in brackets so that the reader can recognise the institution. The same approach applies to educational establishments: the name of a school that has closed or been merged is carried across as it stands, with its present position noted separately.

The occupational and job titles appearing on diplomas and service records belong to the classification of their own period. Matching them to present-day occupations is not the translator’s job; that assessment is for the institution concerned.

The official formula for dates and figures

In legal texts the date is given in a set formula: the day figure inside quotation marks, the month name in the genitive, and an abbreviation following the year. This is no decorative habit; it is the form expected in notarial and court documents, and a plain numerical date does not stand in its place.

The decimal separator is the comma. Titles and month names are written in lower case, and carrying over the capitalisation habits of Turkish official correspondence makes the text look foreign. Amounts are not converted; they stay in the currency of the source.

Tell us how your name was spelled on your earlier documents, and that spelling will be kept throughout the file. See your quote and delivery date at once, and for a line-by-line breakdown look at the pricing page.

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