Sworn Translation in Gümüşhane

The correspondence behind a mining licence

Mining holds a substantial place in Gümüşhane’s economy, and mining is a business that produces far more paper than is supposed from the outside. Evaluating a site means geological reports, drilling logs and laboratory analyses; where the investor, the partner or the buyer is abroad, all of those reports go for translation. On top of that come equipment imports, contracts for technical staff, insurance policies and, from time to time, applications for international finance. The province also draws foreign visitors through its highland tourism; small accommodation businesses have their promotional material, booking texts and agency agreements translated. On the farming and livestock side we mostly see subsidy applications and equipment paperwork. The volume of work arriving is small, then, but the range of documents is surprisingly wide; a single week can bring both a drilling report and a visa file, and the two call for entirely different ways of working.

Which documents arrive

On the corporate side come geological and technical reports, sample analysis results, equipment invoices and customs annexes, and occupational health and safety procedures. In these texts the units, the grades and the coordinate values must be preserved exactly; nothing is interpreted, no figure is rounded, and no unit of measurement is converted in the name of making it easier to follow. On the individual side, the vocational qualification certificates, medical reports, criminal record certificates and diplomas of workers and technicians planning to work abroad come to the fore. For families who have left Gümüşhane and settled abroad, civil registry, pension and inheritance papers are a regular heading too; these files generally have to be approved in the form required by a consulate or a foreign authority.

Why Russian and English do the work in this province

English is the reporting language of the mining industry; no technical file put before an international investor or an independent auditor goes into circulation without it. The source of Russian is geographical and commercial: the foreign trade of the eastern Black Sea has long worked towards the markets to the north, and Gümüşhane stands as a stop on the inland stretch of that line. When equipment comes in second hand, when the buyer or the intermediary is from that side, when the haulier sets out from the country opposite, the correspondence runs in Russian, and the invoice and the delivery record are drawn up in that language as well. The choice of language here is not a cultural matter but an entirely practical consequence of who the commercial counterparty is. That is why files in which one and the same firm asks for the technical annex in English and the contract annex in Russian are anything but rare. You can see the per-page rate for both languages on the languages page.

A small province: infrequent demand, but in a hurry

The volume of work coming from Gümüşhane bears no comparison with the large provinces; there are stretches when it runs at a few files a month, and no one is served by making it out to be more than it is. Against that, most of the work that does come is urgent: a tender date has drawn close, a visa appointment has been booked, a shipment is waiting at the door. This is exactly where working remotely earns its keep – the process starts the moment you upload the document, and the travelling time in between disappears altogether. The sworn signature and, where required, notarisation are completed at our office in Ankara Kızılay; the electronically signed copy arrives the same day and the wet-signed copy by courier. We have no branch in the province, and we say so plainly.

Before you begin

If you are sending a technical report, send us your in-house terminology list as well if you have one; we use it so that the same term goes through the file with the same rendering throughout. On reports running to many pages, working out which sections genuinely need translating also brings the cost down markedly; there is not always any need to translate the whole annex. You can upload your document to the quote form and see the price and the delivery date straight away, and compare the differences between the types of translation on the services page.

The information here is provided for guidance; in a process run remotely the original document may be required. We recommend checking the current position with the authority that will handle the matter.