Sworn Translation in Karabük

A heavy industry file and a tourist brochure come from the same province

The work that reaches us from Karabük does not fit a single mould. On one side there is a supplier network grown up around iron and steel production: firms importing rolling mill equipment, bringing spare parts in from abroad, selling their output by tonnage and by standard number. On the other there is a tourism economy that draws foreign visitors all year round with its preserved urban fabric, and a large number of foreign nationals studying at the province’s higher education institution. In translation terms these two are entirely separate jobs. The first is technical text that demands terminological discipline, where a single alloy code written wrongly causes trouble on the assembly line; the second is official documentation, where what decides matters is far less the fluency of the text than whether the chain of signatures and approvals has been built correctly. Two different working disciplines have to be run on the same page, and we draw that distinction the moment we open the file.

The documents that come most often from Karabük

On the industrial side we see machine acceptance protocols, material analysis reports, quality management system certificates, import contracts and spare parts lists more than anything else. In these documents the units of measurement, the alloy codes and the standard numbers have to be preserved exactly; a single digit out of place creates a real cost at customs or on site. On the student and academic side, diplomas, academic transcripts, recognition application papers, study visa files and letters of reference lead the way. Tourism businesses, for their part, have their promotional copy, accommodation contracts and agency agreements translated regularly. Each of the three groups comes with a different sort of urgency: the industrial file is tied to a shipment, the student file to an application date, the tourism text to the season.

Why English and Arabic stand out

English here is not a preference but the common language of industry. Whether the producer in Karabük is buying equipment from abroad or selling its own output, the party at the other end corresponds in English; the technical standards to be complied with are written in English to begin with, and supplier correspondence runs in that language. The source of the demand for Arabic is something else entirely: students from Arab countries studying at the university in the province, their family and civil registry papers, and the education and residence documents of families who have settled in the region. So the two languages come out of two separate stories – in the one it is the commercial counterparty that shapes things, in the other migration and student mobility. That is why the types of document do not overlap either. The other languages and the per-page tariff stand in a single list; they do not vary from province to province.

What working remotely means for Karabük

Karabük is not a province far from Ankara, but bringing a document over by hand and taking it back still uses up a working day. In practice there is no need for any of that. The engineer at the plant can upload the PDF of a manual in the evening and see the price and the delivery date by morning; the student photographs a transcript on a telephone and sends it; the hotelier settles a contract on a screen in the middle of the season. The sworn signature and, where required, notarisation are completed at our office in Ankara Kızılay, the electronically signed copy lands in your inbox the same day, and the wet-signed original reaches your address by courier. We have no branch in Karabük; rather than conceal that, we have built the process to run remotely from the outset. You do not need to take time off work to hand a document in, or to entrust the file to somebody you know.

How to begin

Upload a legible image of the document you have to the quotation form, and let the page count, the language pair and the delivery date come out at once. On a technical file, add your in-house term list or any earlier translation you have used – we draw on it so that the same term travels through the file with the same rendering. With student paperwork, knowing in advance what form of approval the institution you are applying to requires speeds the work up: some institutions are content with a sworn translation, while others ask for notarisation or an apostille. If you are not sure which service you need, you need only look at the distinctions on the translation services page.

This page is intended as guidance; courier times can vary with distance and with the carrier’s schedule. We recommend confirming the current position with the authority that will carry out the procedure.