Sworn Translation in Mersin

In Mersin the bank stands at the centre of the translation business. Most of the foreign trade moving through the port and the free zone is financed by letter of credit, and the letter of credit is one of the most formalistic document systems in the world. A single word or a single date appearing out of step across the paperwork is enough to suspend payment. This page is about that degree of precision.

This gives the files that come from Mersin a distinguishing feature: translation here is done not to make a text intelligible but to make a set of documents consistent within itself. A translation that is flawless on its own is of no use if it fails to match the others. That is where the difficulty of the work lies, and also the part of it that can be learnt.

What a discrepancy in letter of credit documents means

In a letter of credit transaction the bank examines the documents, not the goods. The description of the goods, the quantity, the weight and the dates have to agree across the bill of lading, the commercial invoice, the packing list, the insurance policy and the certificate of origin. When one of the documents is worded differently in translation, the bank records this as a discrepancy and payment is left to the buyer’s approval. There is therefore no room for a free choice of wording in a letter of credit file: whatever the description of the goods says in the text of the credit is what appears in the other documents.

What we do in practice is simple but effective: we first read the terms of the credit and fix the description of the goods, then align all the supporting documents with that fixed wording.

The free zone and transit trade

The files of firms that set up or operate in the free zone form a group of their own: incorporation documents, applications for an operating licence, paperwork showing the ownership structure, storage and handling contracts. In transit trade, meanwhile, the same goods move between two different countries while the paperwork circulates in three languages at once.

Document	Who examines it	Field checked for consistency
Commercial invoice	Bank	Description of goods, amount, names of the parties
Bill of lading	Bank, customs	Date of shipment, names of ports
Packing list	Bank, buyer	Weight and number of packages
Insurance policy	Bank	Sum insured and scope of cover
Certificate of origin	Customs	Country and manufacturer details
Analysis and inspection report	Buyer’s quality unit	Units of measurement and batch number
Free zone activity paperwork	Zone directorate	Company name and field of activity

The weight Arabic carries in Mersin

The port of Mersin is one of the main gateways for the trade conducted with the countries of the region, and Arabic is therefore not a secondary language here but the daily language of business. Contracts, authorisation and dealership documents, trade registry records and letter of credit correspondence arrive directly in Arabic. English is in every file as the shared language of shipping and banking, while Russian comes up in exports of agricultural produce heading for the northern markets. We publish our per-page rates by language on the pricing page.

Working alongside the customs broker

A good part of the files that come from Mersin reach us not from the exporter directly but from customs brokerage firms. That changes the way the work runs: because the broker knows what the document will be used for, they can say at the outset what is critical in the translation. On our side this is an advantage that does away with needless rounds of questions.

The most productive arrangement in this relationship is to set up a fixed file structure for exporters who come back regularly. The documents drawn up for the same product of the same firm are almost identical from one shipment to the next; only the quantity, the date and the batch details change. Once those variables are separated out, delivery time comes down to hours and the cost per page falls.

Another practical matter is the order in which the documents arrive. The bill of lading is usually drawn up last, so preparing the others without waiting for it means that only the bill of lading is left at the final moment. In busy shipping periods that sequence alone saves a day.

While the ship waits, the paperwork must not

We have no branch in Mersin; the work is carried out at the office in Ankara. On letter of credit files this is no constraint: the copies going to the bank and to the customs broker are digital, so the electronically signed copy can be used the same day. The wet-signed original follows by courier. If you have a file with a shipment date approaching, send it over with the text of the credit attached; establishing consistency between the documents at the start is far quicker than correcting it afterwards.