Sworn Translation in Kocaeli

What creates the need for translation in Kocaeli is not, as in most provinces, an application or a school enrolment; it is a consignment standing at the port. The petrochemical plants, the refinery line and the container terminals run dozens of different flows of paperwork at once in the course of a day. A delay in translating that paperwork comes straight back as demurrage and storage costs.

Another feature of the files from Kocaeli is that most of them belong not to one person but to a chain. For a single shipment the customs broker, the bank, the insurance company and the buyer are all four waiting for different copies of the same documents. The job here, then, is not to translate one document but to complete an interlinked set of them under a single terminological scheme. When one document in the set falls behind, the others being ready is of no use.

Dangerous goods documents: the wrong term is a safety problem

For chemical products, the safety data sheet and the hazard and precautionary statements consist of standardised sentences. Rendering them by free translation is not merely wrong but risky; the official equivalents of these statements are set out in the relevant legislation, and it is those equivalents that are used. On the chemical and petrochemical files reaching us from Kocaeli, our first check is on precisely these standard statements.

The same care applies to product labels, transport declarations and in-plant emergency instructions. The aim in these documents is not a fine text but that the inspector and the operator on site should understand the same thing.

Port paperwork speaks a language of its own

Bills of lading, weight lists, delivery orders, correspondence with the ship’s agent and the annexes to an insurance policy are all texts with set forms of their own. A translation that departs from those forms comes back with a request for correction at the customs or the banking stage. The Turkish equivalents of the terms used in maritime trade are largely settled; our job is to use those settled equivalents, not to invent new ones.

Family of documents	Typical example	What we watch for in translation
Chemical safety	Safety data sheet, label text	The official equivalent of standard hazard statements
Sea transport	Bill of lading, weight list	Settled trade terminology
Customs	Invoice, declaration of origin, movement certificate	Consistency of figures and units
Investment and maintenance	Installation contract, commissioning report	Liability and warranty clauses

Why these three languages

English comes first beyond argument, because it is the de facto working language of the shipping and energy sectors. German arises from the technical relationship with the country the plant equipment and the automation systems come from; maintenance manuals and warranty texts mostly arrive in that language. Arabic, for its part, turns up in product sales to the region and in dealership papers and the annexes to letters of credit. The per-page tariff for these languages does not vary from province to province; the details are on the pricing page.

The language of liability in investment and maintenance contracts

In Kocaeli, plant investments and major maintenance shutdowns add a thick contract file alongside the technical documents. Turnkey installation agreements, commissioning protocols, performance guarantees and penalty terms may all look technical, but their consequences are entirely legal. How the measurement condition is defined in a performance guarantee can be the sole ground on which a dispute worth millions rests.

The point we watch most closely in these texts is the conditional sentence. The difference between “the contractor shall be obliged to provide” and “the contractor shall use reasonable endeavours to provide” is easily erased in translation, yet the two set up wholly different levels of liability. In the same way, the distinction between calendar days and working days has to be preserved wherever periods are stated.

Another risk in long contracts is that the definitions section is passed over. The terms defined at the start of a contract carry a special meaning throughout the rest of it, and they have to be used with the same equivalent every time they appear. On contract files from Kocaeli we turn the definitions section into a separate list and keep to it right through the text.

There is no branch of ours in Kocaeli; every step of the translation and the approvals runs at the office in Ankara. What counts here is not walking distance to an office but the consignment standing at the port while the paperwork is waited on: because you can send the file in at any hour of the day, the process fits your shift pattern. The electronically signed copy is in your hands the same day, so the bank and customs brokerage stages do not go into abeyance, while the wet-signed copy follows on behind by courier.

Not a difference in hours, but hours gained

In Kocaeli, while a document waits to be translated the consignment stands still at the port. Working remotely therefore means more here than simply “not making the journey”: it means being able to send a file in at any hour of the day and to fit the translation to the shift pattern. Because the electronically signed copy is in your hands the same day, the bank and customs brokerage stages do not go into abeyance; the wet-signed copy follows on by courier. If you have an urgent consignment, upload the document directly and we will sort out together which items genuinely require a wet signature.

The information here summarises the process; the notarisation and apostille steps are completed in Ankara. Where you are in any doubt, it is as well to put the point to the institution before you apply.